Oh yeah, actually, I also watched film red last night with my friend. I can see why someone compared it to movie six. I’m just kinda “eh” on it. A lot of the plot points and narrative structure stuff I was laughing incredulously at, also, me and my friend heckled usopp’s dad a whole bunch.

Between the Stars [Pt.3]

Pairings: Past!Steve x Reader, Bucky x  Reader

Series warnings: CHARACTER DEATH. Grief. Overall sadness. Depression. It’s pretty angsty if I’m being honest. Things mellow out as the series goes on. TW: Military/Spouse death

A/N:  Each chapter is a month since steve has been gone as a reminder because this chapter does pick up the morning after Bucky arrived home. Big thanks to my pizza love @moonbeambucky​ for looking it over for me. As always for this series, flashback are italicized. If you like it write a book report, sing me a song or come scream at me. Remember not to judge everyone too harshly till all the secrets come out. ;-)

***My fics are not to be saved or posted on any other sites without my written permission. Reblogs are my jam, though! Thanks!****

“What’s missin’ in here?” 

Bucky stood in the living room, surveying the 420 square feet, coffee in hand, and squinting. You were both tired even after finishing off a pot of coffee between the two of you. Last night ended much like it started; in tears. You weren’t sure how long you cried or how long Bucky held you. There was a lot you needed to get off your chest, a weight you let Bucky carry for a few hours. This morning the burden was back resting heavily on your heart. It was your hardship to carry after all, not Bucky’s. 

He had his own you suspected. 

You stayed quiet as you watched his eyes move around the open floor plan, glancing from the dining to the living room. His eyes flicked along the bookcases lining the staircase, the tan leather sectional, and the two cream color chairs that Steve hated. You had a massive fight over those chairs, a real knock-down-drag-out. Steve didn’t want them. “Why would we buy white furniture when we are going to have kids? They will be covered in stains.” You had argued they weren’t white, they were cream. Things only escalated when you told him you wouldn’t have kids for a few more years anyway, and by then, they would be old enough that a few stains from sticky hands would be okay. Steve had thought kids would come along much sooner, it seemed. You simply couldn’t see how that would work while he was enlisted, and he thought the two of you could get through anything together; lack of communication and assumptions. Steve slept on the couch that night. If only you could go back and say sorry, beg him to come back to bed instead of being stubborn and staying mad to prove a point. 

What you would give to be able to go back and relive it all again, even the bad moments because they always turned into the next good ones. 

Bucky took a step towards the empty space by the front window, the sound of his boots on the hardwood made your heart clench. It was hard to miss now. The whole room looked uneven, looked off. Bucky spun back around to face you and asked gently, voice barely above a whisper, “What happened to your piano?” 

You’ve been waiting for the shoe to drop since Bucky showed up yesterday evening; he spotted the change faster than Sam had. 

“I sold it.” 

Bucky didn’t move or make a sound at your admission. His face stayed impassive, and after a few moments of silence, he simply nodded. The subject was dropped. Sam had flipped his lid when he saw that you had really gone through with selling it, “You loved playing! You shouldn’t be making big decisions like that right now, ones you might regret later.” You didn’t understand why Sam was so shocked, you made it clear that you were done with that life. It didn’t bother you, so it shouldn’t worry Sam. At least, Bucky didn't care. Perhaps he was only better at hiding it; if Bucky was disappointed in you, he made no outward show of it.  

“What plans do you have today?” 

You regarded Bucky with a blank stare over your steaming mug and shrugged a shoulder. You couldn't remember the last time you made plans or filled your day with something over than hiding away in your house. Over the previous two months, your days have consisted of avoiding everyone that you could and staying locked in the safety of the walls you built with Steve. It was the one place no one could judge you for still loving your husband. 

“All right. All right.” Bucky blew out a breath and rested his elbows on the kitchen counter, immediately going into fix-it mode. “Here’s what I was thinkin’ for today--”

You couldn’t help but take in the way Bucky was leaning against the white stone as he talked about the plans he had in mind for the day, what he thought the two of you should try to accomplish today, but you weren’t listening. It wasn’t that you were actively trying to ignore him, but there was something about his hair cut that short, and the way he was watching you as he spoke made you think of times that had long since past. When you were just a bunch of kids with no idea how the world worked or what it meant to be in love. 

“Hey, Trouble.” 

The deep voice calling you made you jump, you turned to see who the culprit was and narrowed your eyes when you saw Bucky holding back his chuckle. The scowl you were giving him looked menacing enough to scare most men off, but it only made the hold Bucky had on his laughter break. You dug an elbow into his ribs, and the groan that slipped from his lips was for your benefit, you were sure. Stupid cute boy. Bucky leaned against the railing, resting on his elbows and doing everything he could to keep his eyes focused on the water rippling under the wood beneath your feet. 

You weren’t sure what reasons Bucky had when he came looking for you because he was actively avoiding meeting your gaze now that he was by your side.

“Sorry,” Bucky said, soft and unsure. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

You smiled at the sincerity in his voice. Bucky rarely let himself be soft and vulnerable when everyone was gathered together like this, in party mode, but that was the side of him you saw more often than not; a secret piece of Bucky only you got to see. 

“It’s okay. I’ve seen one too many horror movies. I feel like Jason is going to come up out of the lake or something,” you said with a shiver and instinctively slid closer to Bucky, letting your arms brush against his. This time you only glanced at him out of the corner of your eye, and he was grinning as if he found something so funny about the situation the two of you were in. 

He wouldn’t find it funny when a swamp monster trudged through the mud and ate you both. 

Bucky leaned his head towards your, still eyeing that same dumb piece of wood bobbing in the rough motions of the lake, the proximity of his lips to your ear made your skin tingle, and he whispered in your ear, “I’ll protect you, Y/n. I promise I’ll always protect you.” 

You turned to face him, and he finally pulled his attention away from that ugly log so he could stare into your eyes. How could they look so blue when it was this dark outside? You swallowed the lump in your throat, worrying your already reddened lip between your teeth and whispered so softly you were scared he wouldn’t hear you, and you wouldn’t find the courage to repeat it.

“Always saving me. How’d I get so lucky to have a friend like you, Buck?”

You have no idea why you said that. It was so stupid! Yes, you were friends, and if you kept saying things like that, things would stay that way. At this rate, you were never going to get a chance to find out if there was something beyond this silly little crush you’ve developed. 

Why didn’t you tell him? Your brain hissed at you. You’re just a big scaredy-cat. 

“Y/n?” 

The firmness in Bucky’s voice brought you back, you shook your head to clear it of the times past and quickly followed it with a nod as if you were answering a question, but you had no idea what was said. Bucky didn’t mention your momentary blackout, but he did take the cup from your hands because your fingers were trembling, and you had yet to notice. You wrung them together to stop them from shaking, but they continued on.

“Have you been by to see Sarah?" Bucky asked again, picking up where he left off without missing a beat.  

You cleared your throat and shifted from one foot to the other, your guilt was shining through loud and clear. No, you had not been by. You had intended to and even tried a few times, only ever made it to the end of the driveway before you retreated back inside and crawled into your bed. It was too hard, and you didn’t think you could face her after everything. It was as if Steve was staring back at you, and that hurt more than your heart could handle. Bucky sighed and pulled your jacket off the hook hanging in the kitchen, holding it out for you to take and gently urged you, “Come on Trouble. I’ll go with you.” 

You grumbled something snarky under your breath that Bucky couldn’t make out, but it made him smile regardless. Your jacket was still hanging off his fingers, so you yanked it off and tucked it under your arm, refusing to let him win every battle today.

“I was thinkin’ we could stop in at Dixie’s on the way.” 

“I’m not hungry,” you grumped, a sour face and firm pout in place.

Bucky held the screen door for you and raised a brow with a smirk curling up the edges of lips, “I didn’t say you had to eat. I’m starving, and I’ve missed their stuffed french toast.” 

Your frown deepened at Bucky’s words and trudged across the yard through the snow to Steve’s truck. There was that stomach sinking expectation that he was trying to force you to eat, the same way everyone else did when they saw you. As if they were trying to cure your grief with casseroles and baked goods, not Bucky, though. He opened the door, and you climbed up into the passenger seat without second-guessing the action. Bucky made his way into the driver’s seat and pulled Steve’s keys out of his pocket; you never even saw him grab them.

It was quiet in the cab as Bucky fiddled with the radio, leaving it low once he had found a song he liked. You turned your gaze towards the window, and after several minutes of silence, you rolled your eyes, admitting with a huff, “I do like their french toast. They do that thing where they put the caramelized bananas on top, and the one with the cream cheese in the middle is pretty good.” 

A small smile formed, but Bucky didn’t say anything. He was smart enough to stay quiet. 

---

Despite having to face your mother-in-law for the first time in two months, you surprisingly felt better than you had this morning. All that sugar from Dixie’s helped. Even though you didn’t want to admit it, it felt good to do normal, everyday things again. Things you would have done with Steve or even before him. It didn’t make you a bad wife to go to breakfast with a friend or to order Steve’s favorite instead of avoiding it. It was okay to laugh a little when Bucky dribbled syrup down his grey Henley and missed the bit in the stubble that was beginning to grow back. Spending time outside the darkness didn’t mean you loved Steve any less or that you had to move on if you weren’t ready to. It simply meant the world continued on, and it was okay for you to do the same when it was time. 

That was a nice reminder, though, standing in front of your mother-in-law's door made it feel as if everything was at a standstill once again and the high from all that sugar was fading fast. You raised your hand to open the back door four or five times, but you couldn’t force yourself to touch the handle. Sarah had her own mourning to work through and didn’t need to add yours on top of it. She shouldn’t have to comfort you, and you were in no shape to console her.

Bucky’s knuckles ran up and down your spine to soothe the jitters you were emitting, he encouraged gently, “Go on, Trouble. She loves you. I know she’ll be excited to see you.” 

You took a deep breath and pushed the backdoor open, it creaked which made you smile. Steve would have complained about adding a little something to grease the hinges, so it wasn’t so loud. Sarah would say no, she liked to hear it squeak when you came in. Sarah’s eyes widened when you stepped through the door, but they quickly lit up with excitement. She was in the same spot as always, sitting at the kitchen table with the newspaper in front of her, thin blonde hair pulled into a bun on the top of her head, and you might have been wrong, but it looked like she was wearing one of Steve’s old shirts. Sarah pulled her glasses off, rising from her chair before you could tell her to stay. 

“Hey, sweetheart. I didn’t expect you to drop by…” 

Her words died off, and her smile quickly fell when Bucky stepped through the door, dusted off his boots on the mat, and smiled at her. It was obvious she was excited to see him, but there was a shake in her hand and a mist in her eyes no one could miss when he spoke, "Hey, Mama R." 

“I-I spoke to Winnie this morning. She didn’t think you would be stopping by right away,” Sarah stopped to give you a hug and whispered she loved you before she reached for Bucky and pulled him into a hug only a mother could provide. Bucky seemed happy to be on the receiving end, “Are you kiddin'? I had to come see you. I’m not home till I do.” 

Maybe it was what Bucky had said or the tenderness in his voice when he said, but it broke whatever glue Sarah was using to hold herself together. You took a few steps back and let your weight sag back against the counter, Bucky stood in the doorway holding Sarah, and you heard her choked whispers from where you were hiding, “Did it-- Were you there? Was it--” 

He shook his head, answering her unspoken question, was it bloody and painful. Bucky assured her, “Yeah, I was there. It was quick, and he wasn’t in any pain. I promise.” 

You met Bucky’s eyes over her shoulder, and he quickly dropped your gaze, his focus back on Sarah and comforting her the best he could. Bucky was lying. You knew him well enough to know when he was telling tall tales and right then was the tallest he’s told. Either he wasn’t with Steve when it happened, or it wasn’t as quick as he was claiming. 

Sarah was quick to wipe her eyes and pretend it never happened. She offered to make lunch, and despite your efforts to stop her by informing her you just came from breakfast, she began cooking anyway. You wanted to protest, but Bucky shook his head, so you let it go. Sarah was only trying to fix what she could, she couldn’t bring Steve back, but she could make ridiculously good turkey Reuben. Steve wasn’t mentioned the rest of the five-hour visit, and you had a feeling it was done for your benefit. It should have been a relief because the last thing you want to do is breakdown in front of Bucky or Sarah, but it only made you angry. 

Would they talk about Steve if you weren’t around? Would they share secrets and memories? Would Bucky have told her what happened to Steve if only you hadn’t come? It wasn’t fair of you to be angry with either of them, but nothing was fair about any of this. 

The ride back to your house was silent. You barely spoke five words to Bucky through lunch, and even though you promised you would soon, you weren’t sure when you would go back to Sarah’s. It wasn’t as hard as you expected, but today had been exhausting. Bucky never turned the radio on, and you were grateful. The quiet gave you a chance to hear the whistle in the wind as the trees rustled and listen for leaves blown by your window. It was a pretty whisper that made your skin prickle, you had forgotten how pretty spring could be. 

Bucky gave you space you so desperately needed once you got home. You bolted towards your bedroom the moment the front door opened. It wasn’t him you were running from. You hoped he knew that, so you left your door cracked. The stale air of your bedroom felt like you were suffocating, and the sight of your blankets in a heap on the top of your mattress only added to your unease. With the window cracked and one of Steve’s shirt now replacing yours, you slowly started to untangle the sheets and gathered your throw pillows off the floor in the corner of the room. Baby steps. That was what Sam was always telling you. So, maybe you start with making your bed. It wasn’t like anyone would know if you gave up. You were all alone. There was a soft knock on your door, and you looked up to find Bucky standing awkwardly in your doorway. 

“Everything okay?”

Bucky cleared his throat and gave you a curt nod. There was something dark in his hands, and he was gripping it so tightly you thought for sure it would rip in two. The stiffness in his frame made you stop, drop the throw pillow in your hand onto the end of the bed, and you took a step towards him. You inspected the hand he was holding out, and your chest tightened when you realized what it was.  

“I wanted to make sure you got this back.” 

Bucky brought your scarf back home. 

“He would want you to know it was with him when it happened. He had you with him when it happened.” 

You ran your fingers along the frayed threads and the new holes that were littered throughout. You could see spots where the sun had faded it, the darker pieces where he tucked it into his shirt. “I, uh, I didn’t wash it. I kept it wrapped in one of his shirts. I didn’t know if...” 

You brought it up to your nose to take a breath and smiled at the familiar earthy citrus scent. When they told you Steve was lost during a mission, you assumed you would never see it again. It was nice to hear Steve wasn’t lying all those times he told you he took it with him, it never left his side just like he promised and it was nice to have that piece of him back.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

Bucky shrugged his shoulder and gestured towards the end of the hall, where he would be if you wanted him. You weren’t going to say anything. The plan was to stay in your room for the rest of the night and wallow, but now… you didn’t want to be alone and holding that thin fabric between your fingers; you had to ask. With Steve’s scarf resting on the corner of your bed, you called out for Bucky before he could leave your sight. 

“Hm?” 

Bucky stopped short and leaned against the doorframe as if he was preparing himself for what you were about to ask. You’ve always been able to read each other, there was no doubt he knew what was coming. 

“It wasn’t quick, was it?” 

Bucky only shook his head in response. It wasn’t an answer to your question, he wasn’t going to answer you right now. He didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe that was for your benefit, or perhaps he simply couldn’t talk about it yet. Either way, you wouldn’t push him.

“W-would you want to, um, have dinner with me?” Your voice cracked when you asked. He caught it, but you pressed on, ignoring the concern darkening his eyes, “I don’t have any groceries. I haven’t been getting out much. There was a thing with a pie--” 

“Thing with a pie?” Bucky interrupted with a curious tilt of the head and playful smirk forming. 

You rolled your eyes and brushed it off with a wave of your hand. 

“It’s not important. People are nosy, and sometimes baked goods make you emotional, okay? It’s normal… Just-- nevermind. I was thinking we could heat up one of those stupid frozen dinners everyone keeps bringing by and stuffing in my freezer.” 

Bucky chuckled and waved his hand, silently telling you to lead the way, “Yeah, let’s go see what we’ve got, but I’m handling the stove.” 

“It’s just warming it up, Buck.” 

“Still,” Bucky whistled lowly, wearing that silly smirk. “I don’t wanna risk it, Trouble.” 

As hard as you tried to fight, you found yourself smiling for the first time in a long, long time. 

--

The next four weeks continued to drag on like every week since Steve has been gone. The hours crawled by, the minutes took forever to pass, and you counted the seconds until you could hide away in your room. Bucky didn’t smother you, but he did hover. He liked to check-in by walking by your room, never saying anything, just glancing towards your bed where he often found you. Bucky didn’t crowd you the way Sam had, but you knew he was taking notice of your lack of sleep and your poor eating habits from the moment he arrived. It wasn’t that you were purposely skipping meals; you had no appetite and forcing yourself to eat felt like torture some days. Your appetite had improved some since Bucky came home, but you still rarely venture out of the house or do much of anything.  Most of your days were spent hiding in your room, and your nights were spent on the back deck. 

It was the best place to stare at the stars.

That’s where Bucky found you yet again, you heard the sliding door rolling along the tracks and Bucky’s bare feet getting closer and closer with each step. Bucky was getting a glass of water like he did every night. He wasn’t the only one paying attention. Bucky slowly sat down next to you, letting his legs hang off the deck like yours but didn’t say anything. It was becoming somewhat of a nightly tradition, and most nights, you didn’t talk. Sometimes you didn’t even mind having the company, other nights weren’t so giving. You turned your head after several silent beats and looked at the man sitting next to you. Bucky gave you a small inquisitive smile, and you shrugged your shoulder. Bucky grinned and leaned his own arms on the railing, mimicking your stance and followed your gaze to the sky.

“So, why are you always out here? I come down every night, and I see you sitting in the same spot.”

It was a fair question, but the answer wasn’t so easy to give. 

“I don’t sleep much anymore.”

Bucky understood that better than most. He really did. Bucky had once told you between the things he had seen and the things he had done, he found it hard to close his eyes and rest. Sleep often meant nightmares, and lately, you had a feeling those were filled with images of Steve. Bucky gazed up at whatever set of stars you were trying to spot through the tears in your eyes, the ones you tried to hide when he came outside. 

Thankfully, Bucky would never bring them up.

“The house feels confining sometimes, but I’m not ready to leave it. It’s quiet, and my bed is cold. Empty. I don’t like it. And…” You sighed heavily and quietly admitted, “I like looking up at the stars. I feel like wherever he is, maybe he’s looking down at the same time I'm looking up. Feels like he’s not fully gone when I do that. It sounds stupid, I know.” 

“It doesn’t sound stupid, Y/n.” 

Bucky tore his eyes away from the sky and looked back at you. He shook his head and let out an amused sigh, "He used to say the same thing. A lot actually. Which didn’t make a lot of sense because our night was usually your day, but he said he liked to look up at the stars hoping you were doing the same and thinking about him." 

You smiled at the thought.

“Why are you downstairs every night? Checking up on me?” You nudged Bucky with your shoulder, and he gave you a gentle nudge back before answering.  

“Hmm. Nightmares. Things I’d rather not see a lot of. I try to avoid them if I can.” 

You hummed in understanding. Even if he hadn’t confided in you years ago about the things that haunted him when he closed his eyes, you knew about nightmares. You were constantly running from yours. The bags under your eyes and the constant yawning was the first sign that sleep no longer came easily. 

“Come on, Trouble,” Bucky urged you as he slowly stood and held his hand out for you. You looked up at him, brow furrowed with a question burning in your eyes; it was three in the morning, where could he possibly want to take you?

“Come on?” you repeated, hoping he would elaborate. 

“Let’s go lay down.” 

Your face went dark, and you looked back up at the stars, shutting down the offer. You couldn't sleep. Bucky tucking you in wouldn't change that. The bed was far too big now, with a cold side that never felt right and left you with an empty chest when you woke. 

"I’ll hold you until you fall asleep. I’ll stay with you, so it doesn’t feel so empty,” Bucky whispered as if he knew all the thoughts bouncing around your head. You slowly reached out and took his hand, letting him help you to your feet. He didn’t let go. Bucky held your hand as he led you through the house. He paused at your bedroom door and waited. It was the space you shared with Steve, and he wasn’t going to step into that territory unless you made it clear it was okay to do so. 

“Can you wait a second?” You whispered. 

Bucky nodded and released your hand so you could slip behind the door. A few minutes later, you stepped into the hallways wearing a baby blue tank top and matching cotton shorts, holding a pillow to your chest. It was Steve’s. You both knew it was. There was no reason to dwell on it or make an outward admission. You waited for Bucky to grab your hand and lead you back to the guest room that he had moved into, staring at his bed covered in more than enough pillows you’re filled with a bit of embarrassment and remorse. 

Bucky was only trying to help. 

“I’m sorry--” 

Bucky quickly pulled you into his arms and shook his head, soothing you with all those pillows bearing witness, “Don’t. You have nothing to be sorry for. Some wouldn’t understand, but I do. I get it. We’re okay, Y/n."  

You nodded even though you didn't feel any better about it, and glanced at his bed. It was the same size as yours, but this one looked much smaller now that you were sharing it with someone else. It’s been nearly two years since you shared a bed with someone else, and you weren’t sure if it was better or worse than sleeping alone.

Steve was always the big spoon. Always. There were rare moments when he would let you carry his troubles and let you hold him, but those didn’t come along often. You didn’t want to do that. It felt wrong even though there wasn't anything indecent about Bucky's offer. The offer was derived from his love for Steve, and for you, he was worried about you, and it was plain to see despite his best efforts to show you otherwise. You could give him an inch, and sleeping didn’t sound so bad after all the nights you have spent struggling to rest. Bucky waited for you to get comfortable; finally, you settled on your side, facing him with Steve’s pillow resting comfortably behind your back as if Steve was holding you, and he gave you a small smile. 

You were stiff when he wrapped his arm around you and pulled you towards him, so your head rested on his chest. It felt odd to let someone other than Steve hold you. Not that you haven't curled up next to Bucky on the couch during a movie or held his hand at Coney island. You’ve felt his lips on your forehead more times than you could count. That was a long time ago, though. Back when you all were just friends, and you thought maybe Bucky had feelings for you. Before that night, the night that changed everything, before vows had been exchanged and the Army, Bucky always seemed to be buzzing around you. He would walk you to class, bring lunch by your dorm whenever he could, Bucky would stay long after everyone else went home and held your hand whenever it was free to hold. 

There was a second, a fleeting twinkle when you thought he was finally going to admit he had feelings for you but, Bucky never said anything. 

Then Steve happened. 

Things between you and Bucky changed fairly quickly once Steve kissed you. Bucky no longer reached for your hand when it was bare. He was quiet. Distant. It took a few months before Bucky finally seemed to be himself again when the three of you were together. Things had changed, you didn't blame him. Steve had, only a little before you talked some sense into him and assured him it would take time for everyone to get used to the new dynamic. Steve had said, Bucky better get used to it because this, you and him, was forever. Forever wasn't quite as long as you or Steve thought it turned out.

“Did Steve ever tell you about the time I caught him fighting two guys double his size behind that old Pizza Hut, holding nothing but one of those red plastic trays as some sorta shield?” 

You chuckled through your sniffles and shook your head as best you could against his chest. The tension in your shoulders lifted enough that you began to relax, and Bucky ran a hand up and down your arm to help take the rest of the weight you were forcing on yourself.

��No, what happened?” 

Bucky snorted, and you knew the look he was wearing. The same look of indignation he wore every time Steve ran headfirst into trouble without thinking of the consequences. 

“Nothin’ good. Little punk ended up with a broken nose, and I lost most of my paycheck tryin' to cool them off enough to leave before they pummeled him into the ground. Then he gets mad at me for stepping in.” 

You tucked your head further into his chest to hide your smile and mumbled against the soft cotton of his shirt. “Lemme guess, he had it under control?” 

Bucky gave your arm a squeeze and confirmed, “Yeah, he had it under control.” 

“Tell me more stories.” You begged quietly, “Please?” 

Bucky was quiet for a few moments, and then his chest rumbled under your ear, “Let’s see, all right. All right. I got one. In fifth grade--” 

Bucky talked until your breath evened out, and soon you were snoozing soundly against his chest. He hoped tonight your nightmares would give you both one night of peaceful sleep, but he wasn’t counting on it. 

The night was coming to an end, and you spent most of it watching Wanda attempting (and failing) to stop Pietro from flirting with every girl present, Clint and Nat making out by the fire all night long and Sam having several serious conversations with Bucky. Dot was still fawning all over Bucky after she got her claws in him and pulled him off the dock and away from you. Not that, that was unusual when everyone got together. She was always all over Bucky. Everyone seemed to have someone and that someone wasn’t you. Even Steve was avoiding you tonight for a reason you couldn't begin to understand. Maybe it was time to throw in the red Solo cup and head home. 

“Y/n?” 

You spun around to see Steve standing behind you, looking out of sorts and a little nervous.  “Hey, Stevie.” 

“Hey. Hi...” Steve gnawed his bottom lip and stared at the fire in front of you, trying to process something by the look in his eyes. He was struggling with something, and you were starting to worry something was seriously wrong. 

“Are you okay, Steve?” 

“Am I okay?” Steve echoed your words. You giggled at the way his brow crumbled, and his nose scrunched up while he thought your question over, making him grin.

“Screws this,” Steve whispered. 

Steve tossed his cup in the fire and took two long strides into your space, cupping your face in both hands, and his lips were on yours before anyone knew what was happening. There were a few whistles and shouts from your idiot friends, but you didn’t notice any of them. All you could see at that moment was Steve. His lips were softer than you pictured, and your heart jumped in a way you didn’t think was possible from one silly kiss. It wasn’t anything indecent, but it was enough to make your knees go weak, and your breath stutter when he finally pulled away Steve pressed his forehead against yours, still cradling your face in his hands when he apologized. 

"Sorry. I really love that laugh." 

Your heart fluttered, and your fingers tightened around his wrists, hopeful it would be enough to keep you standing when the ground drops out from under you a second time.

"You kissed me because you love my laugh?" 

Steve’s cheeks turned a pretty rosy color. His embarrassment wasn't enough to make him let you go just yet. "Yeah, I guess I did.” 

You paused for a beat. 

“How long have you wanted to do that?”

Steve smiled in that sweet, shy way you’ve always liked and whispered just loud enough for you to hear over the noise of the party and the fire raging next to you, “Pretty much from the moment I met you. I mean, It’s you, Y/n. Who wouldn’t want to kiss you?” 

A bright grin stretched across your face, and you stepped back out of his hold, holding your hand out for him to take. Steve took your hand but pulled you back into his arms, this unusual display of confidence coming from him was disarming.

“I was thinking about heading home, but I’m suddenly starving. Wanna go get some cheese fries and drive me home?” 

“Yeah, yeah, we can do that.I’ll go anywhere if I get to go with you,” Steve promised with a grin.  

Your eyes snapped open, and you stared up at the guest room ceiling, trying to catch your breath without waking Bucky. You hated that thinking about that night, let alone dreaming about it and having to see it all play out.  It used to be one of your favorite memories. You would beg Steve to replay the details as if he was reading from the pages of some silly storybook and now you couldn’t stand the slightest hint of that night. Your breath wasn’t steadying, it was only getting worse, and you could feel the panic building, clawing at your throat. You slowly slipped out of bed, leaving Bucky sleeping soundly and retreated to the safety of your room. Closing the door behind you, you flipped the lock, and your legs finally gave out from under you. You slid down the wall, unable to stop your tears you’ve been holding in since you woke.

Sam kept telling you to give it time. It would take time, lots of time to heal, but you didn’t think you could keep going on this way. Not when your own memories are there to torment you. You would give everything you had to simply forget. Forget it all -- his death, the phone call, all of your fights and the makeups, too. The bad and the good. You’d trade the memory of all his kisses if you could just let go of this hurt. 

This wasn’t how fairytales were supposed to end, maybe it was all a lie from the start. Perhaps you were never meant to end with a happy ever after. 

Previous //  Next 

As a fan of manga (mostly everything Tezuka), I'm intrigued by your comments about One Piece, but my assumption is it HAS to be at least PRETTY GOOD to be as popular as it is and to have run as long as it has. I'd be interested in more detailed posts about it, as well as how you recommend reading it, if you do. On a somewhat related note, today I started reading all of Batman. Planning to go from 1939 to 1999, when I first picked up the comics.

Whoops I wrote a lot; sorry:

I’m 615 chapters in out of 1000 (and in the middle of the Fish-Man Island saga which I think fans rank as either the worst or second-worst arc)(the other worst one, this bad tournament arc, I’ve already gotten past)... so I guess I have a lot to say, but you know, nothing especially original, just...

There’s a stretch (namely, the Water 7 arc all the way through Marineford) that is a hall of fame stretch.  He drops like 5-6 arcs that just land perfect right in row (though it’s hard to imagine it ever reaching the heights of the second arc in that series, Ennies Lobby ever again).  But that being said, it’s a little funny to tell anyone “Oh it takes 150 chapters to get really good” (that’s at least 2000+ pages of comics) let alone, that the A+ stuff starts 300 chapters in.  A chapter of One Piece only takes a minutes or so to read, if that, but it’s still a big ask.  People used to get angry if you told them that Deadwood only gets good after 3-4 hours, so... 

But that stretch is ... not “life-affirming” but... it touches a very old part of my brain in a very satisfying way.  

I had a whole long post I deleted because I thought it was boring, but... when I was into classical American superhero comics, the thing I’d constantly be nerdiest about is that there was this Great Possibility, to do something truly epic in that space which I didn’t think had been done.  There’s been a few novels (Watchmen, the Enigma) but not that many.  And American superhero comics don’t really have a Lord of the Rings or a Star Wars or, an example for me as a kid even though I hadn’t read all the books was the Gunslinger books (or sure, The Stand if The Stand had maybe a different ending?  I don’t know-- I’m not watching the TV show but I don’t really remember that ending fondly).  The epic driven by a creator who is creating his own personal mythology, basically.  Most of the genre is tied to pre-existing universes which foreclose that as a possibility and people who work outside those universes tend to just make shit like that Peter Cannon thing or Supreme or whatever that comments back on those universes...

Maybe you could argue the Hickman X-Men thing but for me, everyone after Claremont on X-Men is just inheriting so much from Claremont that... It means very little to me. It’s not a personal mythology. Same with Crisis.  The closest to me comics came was Kirby with the 4th World, but... Carmine Infantino shut that down. And the Claremont run itself is ... an interesting discussion, but again, Bob Harras.  But back before Watchmen 2, back when I thought comics could be this thing that improve over time (haha), I’d look for that (or for any ambition!  any!) and just gave up as time went on.  The careerist generation came in; the ambitions shrank even further; etc., to where I’m at now where my attitude generally with comics is “that’s nice; who care; so, is your wife dating anyone right now, what’s her story?”  

But then One Piece ... One Piece, of all things, becomes this epic thing!  And it’s great!  I was right that it would be great!!!  I was right! (My favorite thing to be!).  

Not at first-- at first the formula is “Wacky Pirates go to an Island, they find out something sad is going on in the Island, a character acting extremely emotional causes the biggest fight possible which goes on for 50 chapters, and then they leave the island and maybe take someone with them.”  And that’s a lot of big arcs... until little by little, tiny bit by tiny bit, Oda’s built up this world.  And then that world starts to become the story.  And that’s still kind of the formula but... but then they’re stakes.

The archetypal shonen cliche story is “a boy wants to be the best in the world at something”, right, but what One Piece does (and I haven’t read as much as other people so I don’t know how common this is, I haven’t read Naruto or Bleach, neither of which I’m too excited to check out, though i think david brothers vouches for Bleach heavy so I’ll probably give that one a shot), what One Piece does is sees how that would necessarily become a political struggle eventually.  Because what does it mean to be the best in the world at something when there’s an entire world out there already in operation, and built around you not being the best in the world, built around someone else being that...

And then there’s just this amount of worldbuilding that goes on, that is so slowly fed out over those first 300 episodes that you don’t even notice it... Until suddenly around Water 7, these bigger forces have now noticed our wacky pirates, and are shifting around them and getting upset about them.  Culminating in this arc called Marineford that ... again not as good as Ennies Lobby but... I don’t think there’s a comparable arc in American comics to Marineford.  The scale of that one... The fact he managed to draw that on a weekly basis!

While still being a goofy kid’s pirate comic.  It’s funny.  The power sets are all really silly, but in a way that reminds of how kids play more than a Dragonball thing.  (He takes like 400-500 chapters to even get to a Dragonball-style levelling up concept, which I thought was pretty patient of him).  But within that, I’m enjoying it now in a very Claremont way of... there now not just being these scrappy outcast heroes I’m rooting for, but an entire universe of people around them, with their own agendas, that I have varying levels of investment in.

There’s this saying that the Golden Age of science fiction is 12 years old, the idea being that’s the age where stuff lands with you the hardest because it’s all NEW for you.  But the thing is if you’re really immature (lifts hand)... I think part of things is you run out of the Good Stuff.  I go back and look at old Chris Claremont X-Mens and if I somehow find one I’ve never read before (and this was the lesson of Dazzler in Hollywood for me), I’m still right there, it still lands with me, there just aren’t that many people who can actually land that plane.  Once Scorcese is gone, what gangster movies are people going to be watching?  Blow?  Savages?  Kubrick only made the movies he made.  People add a little every year, but the really good stuff is rare.  

And so when I’m looking at One Piece and I’m enjoying it the way I’d enjoy a Claremont X-men comic (even if aesthetically it’s a VERY different thing-- sexless and not as weirdo-operatic and less violent and more childish and definitely younger-skewing)... but that I’m getting that same thrill of “oh this comic is a portal to this entire fictional universe this guy made up and that kind of exists now thanks to this (kinda disturbing I guess it turns out) guy” to me is...  Not “life affirming” that’s not the right word but... It feels good on my brain to know.  Because then being sour and grouchy isn’t just me getting older and the inevitability of age-- then it’s just... People need to make better shit!!!  Or I need to do a better job not wasting my time on, you know, an industry that’s not built to deliver what I need as a reader...

I mean, I’ve been saying for more than 10 years, I should just quit American comics and just be one of those guys to switch to manga.  And I’m not 100% there because... I mean, because of Copra and because of like an extremely small list of things that aren’t Copra.  (I just signed for Kate Beaton’s Patreon).  But... I’m 95% there, and it’s been great, and I just feel dumb for not having done it earlier.  

One Piece has big problems, too.  (There’s a whole “Sanji meets drag queens” thing that’s very much not landing with me right now).   I don’t think you can ever top Ennies Lobby because Ennies Lobby is about convincing a suicidal person whose been betrayed their whole life that life’s worth fighting for-- there’s never going to be an emotional engine to the story that’s as good as that one.  It’s trying to work its way back to a “normal One Piece story” in this Fish arc and it’s... I want to see it level up again!  The core cast is just a little too big (it really didn’t need Bones).  I think the shonen model generally creates a sort of “power arms race” where it’s like constantly “oh you learned how to crush mountains with your dick in the last arc?  Well, too bad our mountains are made of diamonds now” escalations that ... feel a little like a treadmill as opposed to a story.  I feel like it needs to kick into a Second Act, after the big ending of that first Act at Marineford.  And just... I don’t know how it can keep topping some of these fights, and think it’d get to be diminishing returns to find out. But... 

A “team of buddies versus the world” is already a great thing for a story to be about, and it’s just really satisfying having One Piece having the “the world” part of that equation being so complicated and varied and colorful.  It’s like if the Ocean’s 11 gang had to rob an overwhelming-more-powerful global crime syndicate, with multiple competing factions, while still convincing Julia Roberts to love them-- they just robbed Andy Garcia and I watch that movie like once a year.

(And thematically, the comic-- it’s not deep, but it’s basically got an anti-authoritarian streak to it, which I think is important for a kid comic to have.  It’s a pirate comic and you can’t really do a pirate comic without being like “fuck the cops” at least a little bit.  The pirate thing is interesting because it basically means that there’s always a discussion going on about what it means to be free, though I think sometimes the comic doesn’t really reckon with that-- it sometimes falls back into “well if there was a good monarch though” thinking... but there being good pirates and bad pirates and good government characters and bad ones, I like that... and the very worst characters just being rich assholes... yeah, good lessons in One Piece for the kids!!). 

That and I just like how that dude draws.  He’s not doing some dreary realism thing-- the layouts are fun without being showy or confusing-- he really improves as the series goes on (though some of the recent stuff I’ve seen hasn’t looked as good, but I’m not sure if I’m seeing low-quality scans or he’s been thrown a loop cause of COVID or what).  I’ll always put up with a boring stretch in a comic if someone, like, crosshatches an arm in a way that I find interesting, so that probably distorts how I read One Piece too...

I could go on and on, basically because ... goddamn, what else do I have to talk about, ughhh.  But yeah: that’s why I think it’s popular-- it’s the worldbuilding.  It’s 100% the worldbuilding.  (By which I’d include that it has this massive cast, that i can keep kinda clear in my head, not all of whom want the same things, etc.)(though also geographically-- there are maps and everything)... But recommend it?  I don’t know-- I mean... It’s a little kid’s pirate comic.  There’s a THOUSAND of them.  It’s more modern than a Tezuka thing-- it’s jumping off more from Toriyama than Tezuka, and that’s a different vibe. It’s like not something you can just “recommend”-- it’s a major time sink.  I’d recommend Chainsaw Man first to someone with my age and background because even though it has its own flaws, it’s more “age appropriate” and there are only 90 chapters, and it’s got that rad stretch about 20 chapters in so you see the “good part” faster... 

The Boys Season 1 Review and Comparison

This was so cathartic.

In an age where we’re inundated with superhero media on all fronts with their bright colors, cheery jokes and positive outlooks, it’s easy to slowly become sick of it, feel the “superhero fatigue” as it were. Where Marvel ruins some stories with far too many jokes (looking at you Thor: Ragnarok) and DC is far too dreary and serious for its own good with a lack of levity, where can one turn to for a GOOD happy medium?

Well, in comes Seth Rogan and Evan Gold, the brilliant minds behind the amazing adaptation of Preacher with yet another brutal and slightly more cynical series. The Boys absolutely stuns not only by being a genuinely compelling series, but also by being one of the few adaptations that improves on the original medium in a few aspects.

Story

The story centers around Hughie Campbell and the titular Boys as they work to expose the horrific deeds of The Seven, a collective of the world's greatest superheroes, and the company that sponsors them, Vought American.

In this world, superheroes are everywhere. They're on breakfast cereals, TV shows, movies, pretty much every piece of media and entertainment imaginable while also protecting America from crime. Sounds familiar, huh? The kicker here is that, much like every asshole celebrity that lets the fame and fortune go to their heads, these heroes are massive cunts. They take performance enhancing drugs, routinely cause accidents that hurt or kill people, sexually harass people left and right and just lie to their adoring public like they’re children.

Unlike the books, however, The Boys team isn’t the well oiled machine that’s been taking down and blackmailing superheroes for years and the first four episodes are spent introducing the different team members.This is likely due to wanting to give people time to care about them individually and the limited number of episodes in the season. This definitely works in also retooling the characters themselves for TV since they may not have seventy-two issues of character development ahead of them

For the most part, the show follows the initial story beats of the comics with a few select differences before splintering off in an entirely new direction. Hughie’s girlfriend still gets blown apart by A-Train, he denies Vought America’s hush money which draws the attention of Billy Butcher and Starlight joins the Seven after the “death” of the hero Lamplighter. 

This also means that there's less time to focus on smaller plotlines and teams that are referenced to in passing dialogue like the Teenage Kix, a pastiche on the Teen Titans, or Payback, the number two group of superheroes to The Seven. While seeing the team take these guys down on the small screen would have been fun, I like the idea of keeping the plot focused on just the core group of antagonists. This way, we don’t have to slog through three or four seasons of small fry and get the big bads in the last few.

After the first half, fans of the comic may start to feel a little bit of the familiar, but then things start to take a drastic turn when Billy's pride and the rest of the teams sloppiness gets them all burned and branded wanted criminals. This never happens in the books because The Boys are funded and protected by the CIA, but here they’re just another group of concerned citizens that are completely in over their heads, adding to the tension and keeping everyone guessing as to what will happen for the rest of the season and in Season 2.

Themes

The original series was written during the latter years of the Bush Administration. Tensions were high and America was still embroiled in the Iraq War. The president was a simpering fool and companies were fucking people over left and right in the name of patriotism. Reality TV and the awful personalities on our screens were on nearly every channel and all of this only fueled the anger that is Garth Ennis’ pen and Darick Robertson’s pencils. It was a product of its time and it was perfect.

We’re now in the Information Age where superheroes and social media are the only things that matter in everyone’s mind, where women’s empowerment is stronger than ever and our leaders speak bombastically with shit eating grins full of lies. Rogen and Goldberg have kept the series modern and take everything to task.

Media. Marvel and DC are everywhere nowadays with some indie companies managing to scrape up their own part of the pie. The Boys makes fun of the seemingly endless cycle of sequels and the goody-two-shoes images of America’s favorite heroes. Everything is carefully managed and curated by a media team, similar to how Disney micromanages even the smallest details of their properties to make everything so sickeningly squeaky clean. 

Not only do the heroes stop crime, but they star in their own movies about themselves as well, some have sponsorships for shoes and have to compete with each other for everything. Almost everything is done for the cameras, even intimate moments whenever Vought can find a way to make it work. The heroes are never too far from the spotlight even when they want to be and oftentimes their acts can go viral without them knowing.

Sexual Assault. In the comics, Starlight is sexually assaulted by Homelander, Black Noir and A-Train in a gross scene to establish that there’s nothing good in that world. It was good for its time in its own dark way, but today there are absolutely consequences to such things as there should have been back then. In the show, Starlight is assaulted by The Deep, her childhood crush, alone. 

It’s dark and makes use of the imbalance of power as The Deep threatens to have her kicked off of the team. Soon after, Starlight comes forward with what happens to her, not allowing herself to let what happened stand and unlike in the books, The Deep gets his comeuppance. Though this also unfortunately leading to him getting assaulted as well. It’s powerful and allows for Starlight to move what could have been an image of weakness, though Vought uses this to their advantage as well, painting her a feminist icon. Best for business right?

Politics. While not everything has to be an allegory for Trump, it’s hard to say that Homelander isn’t just that. He’s what the president thinks he is, a strong, blonde haired man that the entire country loves. Homelander has the people eating out of the palm of his hands and he’s only feeding them shit. He hates the common man and will just as easily let many die if it can somehow serve his interests. He’s not above a little sexual harassment himself and he is just an evil bastard.

There’s also a subplot of military application of superheroes that I feel mirrors the discussion on the use of drones in war. Drones are absolutely deadly and have caused the deaths of hundreds, even innocents when things have gone really wrong. Even President Obama was criticized for how reckless and dangerous their use could be. The world could only imagine the hell that would rain down if superheroes were allowed to duke it out over national security.

Characters

The Boys as a comic series was an unrepentantly cynical take on the superhero genre in an established universe of heroes. The creator, Garth Ennis, didn’t grow up with many superheroes and actually felt disrespected by a few of them, like Captain America. He brought on the amazing Darick Robertson and other artists to realize this horrid world of drugs, hardcore sex and brutal violence. Many of the stories are fun and hilarious, but with the unfortunate feeling of a lot of them feeling one note due to the one dimensional nature of a lot of the “heroes” and the ever escalating level of black humor to the point of being cartoonish.

Our main character cast is absolutely fantastic. Jack Quiad’s Hughie is much like his comic counterpart, aside from being like six feet tall and not Scottish. He’s surprisingly smart with a lot of awkwardness about him. He has a good heart and doesn’t see ALL superheroes as being evil, but does have a slight sense of justice that wants to see The Seven and Vought taken down. 

Karl Urban’s Butcher was the absolute perfect casting choice. He’s got that wry British wit, the fury to capture Butcher’s rage against supes and can play a manipulator like nobody's business. His character arc is one of the few regressions that I can actually appreciate for how it's done, especially as things become more fucked because of him and how he chooses to blame everyone else.

Everyone else is a slight bit of an improvement over the comics versions. The Frenchman, played by Tomer Capon, is similar to his comics counterpart, but we’re given reason to care about him and The Female. In the comics, Frenchie and the Female knew each other prior, but I don’t think it’s ever revealed how they met or became close. In the show Frenchie frees The Female, played by Karen Fukuhara, from thugs that had been keeping her prisoner and he slowly gains her trust over the course of the next few episodes after her introduction. We see their friendship grow, learn a little bit of her backstory and get a better understanding of what she wants versus just following Frenchie around and being terrifyingly adorable.

Annie January aka Starlight, played by Erin Moriarty, is probably the second best change in character in the series. She starts out as a bright eyed, bushy tailed hero looking to do good, but after being sexually assaulted on her first day in The Seven, decides that it will never happen again. In the comics, Annie stays around in The Seven and takes the abuse for a little while before speaking out and fighting back against the rest of them. What makes things even better, not only does she challenge her uber Christian beliefs during an event sponsored by Vought, but she does so while also getting Vought to force her abuser into giving a public apology at the mere thought of her causing their stock prices to crash.

Consequently, Mother’s Milk, portrayed by Laz Alonso, one of the most layered characters in the comics isn’t made better, but the more ridiculous aspects of is character have been toned down. We don’t hear of his disabled mother and his addiction to her breast milk that fuels his own superpowers, nor is his wife a crack addict that makes pornos with their daughter. He’s simply a reliable member of the team that loves his wife and will give Butcher the truth when he’s acting like an asshole.

The series actually brings a lot of grey to most of these characters. A-Train never once shows remorse for his actions in the books, but in the show he's painted as kind of sympathetic, while still being seen as a monster for what he does and the reasons behind them. The Deep could go either way after his actions with a redemption arc or a full turn to villain, but is shown to be knowingly aware of how little regard there is for him. He calls himself a "diversity hire" and acknowledges his own ineptitude, but he's still an absolutely terrible person.

Queen Maeve may be one of my favorite changes that manages to be even more sympathetic than her already pretty great comic counterpart. She, much like Starlight, did want to change the world, but she let the apathy and jaded nature of the job take her over. She's an alcoholic that sees a bit of herself in Starlight. The change comes in how she reacts to what I think might be Homelander's most heinous act in the show. She shows far more remorse and guilt over what happens than she does in the comic, showing us a side of her makes you want to root for her and to see her get better.

The best character… dear Lord, is Homelander, played by Anthony Starr. Homelander is a bastard. The worst thing imaginable because of his sheer strength and power. He’s a sociopath with all of the powers of Superman and none of the goodness. In the comics he’s simply just another asshole. 

He’s the most powerful of the Seven and absolutely revels in the hedonistic lifestyle that he’s accustomed to while also hating being under the rule of Vought. In the show, he’s shown as being supportive to Vought, especially it’s current Senior VP of Hero Management, Madelyn Stillwell. He has something of a mommy fetish as shown with his interactions with her and later in the series actually expresses emotions over learning of his own tragedies, but instead of trying to change for the better, he doubles down on his hatred and anger to become an even bigger monster than before. 

In the comic he just wants all of the superheroes to conquer the world, but here, he just wants to hurt everyone who hurts him. He plays games like a child, threatening and revealing secrets to toy with people before absolutely breaking them. He's horrible in a very personal way and his sneering smile only makes him so much more hateable. He knows there isn't a damn thing you can do to stop him and he revels in that fact, I love it.

Pacing and Direction

Coming in at an hour for each episode, the first two to three can feel a bit slow. Getting all of the story elements to sit just right can take time, especially as new things are introduced every few minutes. This slow burn approach easily helps to build the tension before things get really crazy by episode four. By that point, the story is unfolding at a perfect rhythm, the team is mostly together, they’ve made their plans of action and it’s all so smooth.

Thankfully each episode is directed by different people to avoid each feeling so similar. The common humor and tone is kept the same, but some episodes are very hopeful almost before being met with one that absolutely makes you hate certain characters and the actions that they take. In particular, the episode where Hughie and Butcher visit a group therapy session and Butcher flies off into a rage about the weakness of the attendees as they basically lick the balls of the heroes that have maimed them was amazing. The director pulls so much emotion out of that scene and continues on as the episode moves along in a far more dramatic fashion than some of the others.

Some others lean heavier on the debauchery such as the episode where Hughie and Butcher venture into a superhero sex club and watch as these guys do some pretty amazing feats with their abilities in some really gross ways. There’s a good balance of levity and drama that makes neither feel too overwhelming.

Overall

With a great cast, impeccable acting and an unpredictability that I actually enjoyed, The Boys absolutely blew me away. I was wholly prepared to rip it apart if I felt like it didn’t do the story justice, but Rogen and Goldberg are fans and knew what we all wanted. It’s unabashedly a comic book show, but still has enough to it that people who have never heard of the series will be floored by how much they can find to enjoy.

It’s for the nihilistic and jaded comic book fan. It’s for the casual watcher who’s gotten enough of Marvel’s colorful displays of happiness and it’s absolutely for the happy person who just wants to have some fun with what they watch. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this season of The Boys. So much so that I’m aching with anticipation to re-read the comic series in preparation for Season Two. It’s unlikely that it’ll follow the plot much, if at all after the ending, but with Stormfront (as a woman) being announced as the new Hero joining the Seven in the next season, I’m excited as to who else they might pull. This first season absolutely earns a high recommendation from me.

case study: elle benjamin

the rationality community's least skilled exploiter of transmisogynistic coordination points known to me

when thinking about strategy, i often use the least sophisticated version of a given strategy that i know of to reason about the minimal elements of the strategy in general. i have an index of unsophisticated versions of things that i ping and ask "is this strategy basically this vector but with more optimization power behind it?" it helps compress a lot of information. to check, i can make a prediction given a set of examples of the pattern and test it.

(like i did with the transmisogynistic rationalist orgs "i bet this org has 0 transfems in positions of power" and yep they did, they all did.)

and thats how i factor strategies generated by agents with large amounts of optimization power. who might have more ability to optimize in a domain than i do.

both of these claims are false. elle benjamin never let emma into the group. shes culpable for her continued choice to "believe" bigoted propaganda. just as davis tower kingsley is culpable for "believing" that anna salamon, the president of cfar, isnt involved in cfar's hiring.

elle benjamin is deeply concerned about the treatment of trans people in the rationalist community. elle isnt that good at social optimization so this is an obvious false face. like a cop during segregation who runs an algorithm of "smile at people" if no black people are using the WHITE water fountain and "beat up a human" if a black human uses the WHITE water fountain. as long as trans women know their place as violent abusers like ▘▕▜▋, elle is happy.

if we start claiming we are women just the same as them and how people are treating us is wrong, if we protest against omnicide, if other people are coordinating against trans women along lines of transmisogyny; then elle decides its time to show us our place in the social order as male. violent, child abuse loving, misogynistic, strong-arming, men.

this decision-circuit is not peaceful. people who start trying to exploit transmisogyny in an attempt to coordinate with others against you only when you look vulnerable or they think they can get away with it and otherwise smile at transfems are with their whole soul given over to transmisogyny.

erica's post is so passive-aggressive!

<<One issue is that i think this group is just too large to remain a high trust environment.>>

<<Thanks everyone for keeping this a civil place that deals with sensitive issues all these years!>>

in reference to my blog posts about how they didnt have any transfem mods and immediately took down hot allostatic load because it was a [[bad culture fit]] and [[incoherent]]. as if i were expected to keep some confidentiality about transmisogyny. i have no loyalty to keeping secret that kind of oppression, i signed no contract to that effect.

as if telling other trans people exactly what they did was "uncivil"! as if it were ruinous to society instead of ruinous to a cis women coordinating on transmisogyny.

as if posting hot allostatic load and talking about transmisogyny on my blog were less "sensitive" than the other things the group was doing which included posts like "How many romantic novels/movies/etc do we have left, once we take away all the ones focused on a man relentlessly trying to convince a woman through trickery and persistence and stalking that she should really have sex with him" and "the White Knight/Damsel in Distress dynamic" at the time HAL was taken down.

https://somnilogical.tumblr.com/post/175420481784/i-tried-to-post-to-rationalist-feminists-closed

its an equilibrium where anyone opposing the "peace" of transmisogyny is labeled "antisocial" and "disrupting things".

would you say this woman is being misogynistic and "strong-arming" a female DA?

<<Last year, I was arrested twice in Sonoma County at Sunrise Farms and then Petaluma Poultry, two massive industrial farms that torture and kill hundreds of thousands of birds- while lying to the public about how these animals are treated. My crime? Asking the county to help the starving animals inside. Not just asking by email or phone call or office visit (though all these efforts were made and ignored), but asking by going right to the frontlines myself, exercising my statutory right to help neglected animals, and calling the attention of the authorities to this pervasive cruelty. The fact that the sheriffs chose to arrest us and ignore the animal cruelty broke my heart. It's hard to believe we live in a world where helping someone who is dying is the "crime" and not putting that life in danger in the first place. But have hope that this will change, and my hope growing.>>

<<Now, in response to the action at Reichardt, Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch has decided to file additional charges against me, Priya Sawhney, and Wayne Hsiung. We are already facing 7 felonies and 5 misdemeanors and we're still fighting for animals every day. Do you think new charges will stop us? No. And it wont stop the movement, either. They think they can stop DxE by targeting leadership, but they don't understand that we are a network of leaders. That every single one of us is leading the world to one of the biggest changes it will ever see. #RightToRescue>>

probably not because shes cis and looks like:

laying down and making it clear that you offer no impediment to mass murder is not a female thing, its not a feminist thing. its a *you* thing, elle benjamin.

someone commented on the screenshots:

<<(It feels relevant that when I met this person a few months ago they went on a rant about the evils of TERF’s before telling me I couldn’t experience misogyny bc I was “male-socialised.” They apologised quickly after having it explained but the idea of their being the Font of Wisdom about transness to rats is insane.)>>

https://loving-not-heyting.tumblr.com/post/614660027724283904/ht-somni-for-screengrabs-this-sums-up-absolutely

ozy brennan, i know what the fuck im talking about when i say "transmisogyny". ive been lied to then kicked out of a homeless shelter for being a trans woman. several men forced me to the ground and held me down and cut off my clothes while i shouted "I DONT CONSENT" locked me in a bare room then crowded around a window embedded in a door and said "i told you it was a guy" and a bunch of people came to gawk at my naked body. and so much more.

some of my interactions on the street in the bay:

<<at bart ppl would call me an ugly bitch and ask me to sleep with them in exchange for meth

someone tried to sell me something and i was like "im not interested in being scammed today" and they were like "bitch!!!"

i walked around in sf talking with a homeless women for ~8 hours and someone asked if we had boyfriends and offered to sell us meth if we went with him and i was like "no thanks" and she was like "how much?" but it was too expensive or something. she showed me lots of places to get food and shelter.

and like if i sit down in places for long enough people will come up to me and ask me if i have a boyfriend or if i want to go get coffee with them on a date.

sometimes ppl ask where im *really* from and if i was born a girl. sometimes ppl touch me on my back or thigh.>>

ive compared notes with cisfems, i get more solicitations to have sex with men in exchange for meth.

this isnt oppression olympics, this is "maybe 7-8 years ago when i started transitioning i didnt have a detailed model of transmisogyny, but now i cant not have one". alyssa vance could have one too (and know things like elle is the kind of person who exploits transmisogyny whenever she gets a chance) if she werent busy using her adult intelligence to defeat itself for miri/cfar.

what elle benjamin did was transmisogynistic and i can arbitrage actually being aligned with justice by taking a stack of screenshots of all the things she said and showing them to transfems uninvolved with the ambient miri/cfar gaslighting. and theyll be like "yup, thats transmisogyny". and other transfems can be like "yup, elle was also transmisogynist to me."

rationalists like alyssa vance and ozy brennan currently have an incentive to imply people who accurately identify transmisogyny are crazy. to go along with the status quo. (if i had to guess: ozy to protect an environment where they can provide for their baby, alyssa because she routed her hopes for personal immortality through miri/cfar.) though its not like i expect /alyssa vance/ to start calling transfems “gross uncle style abusers" like patrick lavictiore did or start listing off their "manly" physical characteristics contra anna salamon being a small feeble cisfem like peter did. not because alyssa vance is a particularly good person, shes not. but because thats paying in to a coordination technique that could be used against /her/. she doesnt expect social reality to label her "psychotic" anytime soon so she pays into that instead. ozy does and didnt call me "psychotic". this optimization is dumb, myopic, and doesnt serve their own values. but all evil is like that.

i dont hold by "use words for their expected value over a community" like scott alexander does. this is nice because i can align what i say with my internal cluster structure of anticipations of reality and escalate arbitrarily far without things breaking. elle benjamin cant escalate very far until her claim of ziz being a "misogynist" shatters, because its not exploiting the cluster structure of thing-space.

anyway GG on this front. the territory of "elle benjamin isnt transmisogynistic, somni is hallucinating transmisogyny" isnt worth enough for the miri/cfar campaign to expend energy on; elle benjamin isnt an important piece to miri/cfar like anna salamon is; and alyssa vance isnt in an environment with a bunch of warm bodies she can coordinate on a falsehood with. so afaict this region is ceded.

one technique of fem v fem cyberontological combat when you are right is arbitrage. when people gather a bunch of warm bodies together to gaslight you that elle benjamin isnt doing transmisogyny or whatever. instead of submitting to a series of increasingly arcane requirements until your writing looks like the inside of /principia mathematica/ and then have people complain about you writing long technical paragraphs saying they dont understand them dont care to understand them and you must be crazy;

just take a comprehensive recording of them all choosing to be dumb in a given direction and show it to people who dont have a political commitment to be dumb in that direction (which, when you are right, is often most people outside of the gaslighting bubble) and explain why its wrong. there are a lot of overlapping social spheres and you can iteratively arbitrage between them exploiting the fact that the methods of rationality and justice are more universal than specific false coordination points. in go terms, the spirit of this strategy is tenuki.

--

alyssa vance also says anna salamon isnt transmisogynistic, tried claiming ziz whistleblowing on miri/cfar paying out to blackmail was blackmail, and defends paying out to oneshot blackmail with subjunctive dependence for cdt reasons.

Comic Review

Ghostbusters: Year One Issue One

So Year One Issue One came out today! I wanted to do a little comic review about my thoughts. In short: I really liked it and if you collect Ghostbusters comics, you should pick it up! (IDW is really good about putting their GB stories out in trade, so if you wanted to wait for the four issues to be published together, there’s always that option too.) There's going to be spoilers further down, so here's your warning.

Comparing this mini-series to the previous GB storylines, it's obviously a lot smaller in scale, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The previous IDW comics saw the gang going across the USA and to international locations, pulling in GB charas from alternate dimensions, and fighting god-scale threats. I really like the idea of a shorter comic series that focuses on some character development instead, which is what this seems to be.

Each of the four issues in this mini-series is going to focus on one of the four GB's, and I like that Winston got the first issue. The IDW comics have always done a good job of giving him equal "screentime” to the other three GB's, which is nice.

The set-up for the storyline is that a writer, Rebecca Morales, is interviewing the four GB’s for a book she's writing, shortly after the Gozer incident. (Hence the title being Year One.)

We open with brief snippets of Rebecca interviewing Louis, Dana, the manager of the Sedgewick, the archbishop, etc. I liked this as an opening, it was fun seeing the artist's renditions of some of the movie's minor characters. Then we cut to Rebecca and Winston and get the real interview started.

Winston is surprised at how thorough Rebecca is being for the book, and she points out that Peter finagled the publisher to pay the GB's for exclusive rights to their story, so they're taking the extra steps. That made me laugh; I always appreciate how the writer Erik Burnham throws in these little moments that are really in-character in his GB comics.

We get a brief overview of how Winston left the marines, moved to New York, and worked at a construction company until he left and spotted the GB's ad in the newspaper. (This is a bit different from Real Ghostbusters, where Winston's dad owns a construction company, but it is definitely a homage to that backstory from the cartoon.)

Great lines: Janine (greeting Winston at the start of his interview): You find the place okay? Winston: Yeah, I saw the sign. Janine: Oh good. They're always so worried people won't notice.

Here they do the scene of Winston's interview from the movie, with Janine and Winston' classic banter, and this is the only part of the comic I felt was unnecessary. I don't really feel like they needed to spend a whole page of a short, 20-page comic re-treading a scene we all know by heart. But thankfully this page and the opening two pages are really the only ones that recap the movie.

We move on to a scene of Ray and Winston on the roof of GB HQ (always one of the settings I like in the comics). Ray is directing Winston through target practice, using a thrower to take out pumpkins. Ray says Winston is ready to go out in the field. Winston is flabbergasted by the idea, since he's been practicing for like 15 minutes. Ray says this is fine.

I love this because it just shows why Winston is needed in this company. Ray, Egon and Peter are honest people (mostly) but they just aren't practical. Really common sense things often don't occur to them. You know, like maybe someone should train with a dangerous tool more than 15 minutes before going out on a job. Winston doesn't really put up more than a token resistance to things like this, but at least he voices what we readers are also thinking. (I mean, to be fair, it would take a stronger being than Winston Zeddemore--possibly some sort of god--to convince those three to use common sense.)

We jump to Winston's first bust, which is when the guys get called to Excelsior University, Thurman Hall, said to be haunted by the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe. (In real life as well as in this comic universe!) I have to admit I did a happy dance at the idea of seeing the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe, one of my favorite writers.

The guys splint up to cover more ground (of course) and Winston runs into the ghost of Poe, who turns into a flock of ravens and flees the school. The guys give chase, corning the spirit in Washington Square Park as a giant demon black cat is summoned.

More great lines: Peter: Well it looks like they're tap-tap-tapping. At least it's not a chamber door. Egon: But why? Peter: This I sat engaged and guessing. (Peter reads classic literature! But if you ask, he'll deny it.)

Ray: Poe's taking off! Peter: Isn't that just like him? What, am I the only one who read the biography? Egon: You read the notes I gave you.

Peter: Looked into the trap, huh? Egon did that too. Egon: He doesn't need to hear about that, Venkman.

The comic is wrapped up quickly after that. They catch the ghost cat, we see the spirit of Poe got away in the commotion, and we have a brief conclusion to Winston's interview with Rebecca.

Like I said, it's a much smaller contained story than all the inter-dimensional chaos of GB comics in the past, and it does feel a little slower as consequence. This is the problem you’ll have with any series or sequel, isn't it? If you keep escalating each time, eventually you can't go any bigger and you have to step back. But it was a lot of fun to see these characters interacting at the start of their friendships.

I hope the future three issues have some conflict between the guys, specifically, because all four of them have such different ways of looking at the world and different goals and priorities. I don't mean the cliche "giant argument where everyone splits up right before the climax and then they come back together to defeat the Big Thing together." But doing this Year One storyline would be a great opportunity to show some rocky relationships developing between the guys, before they form their tight-knit group of later years.

I also have to say, as fun as it was to have Edgar Allen Poe in the comic and see the little references to his works like the ravens, cat, and heart, I always feel a little weird when the GB comics make references to famous real life things. (Which they do a lot.) Because then usually these things tend to get ruined, which makes me sad. Like when they went to the Louvre in GB International and destroyed famous pieces of art? (Okay in a later issue there was a passing reference that "most of those were recreations." So.. only SOME famous pieces of art were permanently destroyed by our heroes..?) And once Ray quipped that they busted the ghost of Gandhi. o.o Unlike those examples, though, we have a direct reference here to Edgar Allen Poe's spirit escaping, so I don't feel quite as bad. We'll have to wait and see if he returns in the next three issues or not.

So that's it! Next month we have Ray's issue, and I'm definitely looking forward to it. Now that they spent the first issue setting up the story, I’m hoping we’ll get into the action faster with the next issue. I'll do another review when it comes out and let you know!

Ditto

A Monsta X one-shot - bad-boy Minhyuk x reader College au

(warnings: Bullying) Word count: 5k

A/N: I got carried away with this, but I'm super proud of it! So Enjoy (Also I don't own this gif)

It was like a scene from a bad, early 2000’s teen movie.

You could’ve pictured the freeze frame in your head complete with the trademark record scratch.

There was you - shirt soaked with boiling coffee, the villainess - with the empty cup in hand and a face full of evil intent, and there was the crowd - equally as shocked as you but simultaneously entertained in the way people are when they get to watch a spat they aren't involved in.

Though unfortunately for you this wasn’t a movie, and that coffee wasn’t a safe prop. It was too hot to even be considered drinkable and it scalded you through the shirt clinging to your skin. Pain took the breath straight out of your lungs, and you couldn’t focus enough to understand the words the girl yelled vehemently in your face.

The girl - you think she’s from your class - looks less than happy.

No, she was from your class; top student if you weren’t mistaken, and you’d just scored higher than her on the exam. And been awarded the music production internship ahead of her.

Well that explains things

Only two students in the program got the opportunity, and you were chosen along with a boy in the class above you, named Wonho. (But no one in their right mind would confront a Monsta x member unless they were looking for a black eye.)

So, that made you the only possible victim for the jealousy of others. You had been an underdog in the running. A student with promising talent but the least amount of training. You guessed the choice didn’t sit well with some due to the molten drink on your chest.

Speaking of your chest and that molten drink, the pain was starting to become a little more important to your body. Important in the way that it needed to stop.

Quickly.

Onlookers finally snapped out of their shock and started laughing. The girl was still screaming, and unwanted tears started welling in your eyes. Before anything else could escalate you took off down the hallway without a second thought. Your only goal was getting away from the cold giggles and raised voices.

The only phrase you caught from the girl prior to you rounding the corner rung in your ears.

You don’t deserve it y/n, you poor bitch!

Now, you didn’t feel ashamed that you’d won the scholarship. It was something you’d worked countless hours in the school studio for considering you couldn’t afford your own equipment.

You locked yourself away on campus, through the night sometimes, to perfect every aspect of the piece, and the song you submitted after months of work spoke more about your soul than you think you could ever put into words.

You used all of your favorite instruments in the track and let the notes become emotions. Harmonies became dreams never spoken aloud, and the lyrics were words you regretted not saying. The things you wanted to express but had no means to.

That was what music was for you – a place to pour out strong emotions.

To you, humanity was nothing without music. It has the ability to bring out the empathy in everyone, the need to connect with others - their pain and happiness. Music could help people relate to one another universally. Sure, making songs had certain rules and techniques, but those alone couldn’t make something extra-ordinary. It was the heart of the songwriter that combined with those things that mattered.

In the end, it was the bit of You in the song that made it beyond the others.

But currently you didn’t feel very talented. Mainly you felt naïve for expecting everyone would be happy somehow that you’d been successful.

The seed of doubt had been planted, and you didn’t know if you could keep the plant from taking root.

Without really thinking you threw yourself through the next door you saw, slamming it behind you. Your hands were already working the buttons of your top free as you slid down the door sobbing in pain and humiliation.

You half ripped, half peeled the material from your skin and hissed at the irritation. The angry red burn stretched from your left collarbone across to the ribs on your right side. Without the pressure of your shirt the pain went down a few notches, and the relief allowed you to breathe deeper, greedily taking in oxygen you’d missed.

And you didn’t know what to do next.

Well, your rational brain did, but your current state was anything but rational. Realistically, you should try to cool down the area-

“Are you okay?”

The last person you expected to see gaped at you from the piano bench. You’d thrown yourself into the music room, a realization that came a little late, right into the middle of Lee Minhyuk's vocal practice.

Minhyuk was a part of the schools’ group of quote-unquote “Bad Boys”. He was considered the most level-headed member of Monsta X and the one you wanted to deal with if you needed to interact with the rowdy group.

He was the one least likely to take offence and ruin your reputation/face. At least in comparison with Hyungwon or Kihyun. They were the touchiest ones. Still, Minhyuk had the same reputation as the rest of them.

Handsome, confident, mischievous, and dangerous.

You’d heard enough rumors to fill an entire series of encyclopedias with scenarios scary enough to keep you up at night. You only wished that was enough to keep you from secretly admiring him.

His freedom to be what he wanted without challenges. The loyalty he showed his friends. The outspoken intelligence you’d never seen on anyone else in the entire school. He was risky, but a small part of you was screaming 'So what?'

You knew that intrigue would get you in trouble.

You’d heard him sing once and that was what got you into this mess.

One of your sessions in the studio had ended a little later than usual, so you left at a different time than you were used to. You cut through the auditorium like you always did, the backstage door was closer to the parking lot than the front entrance, and that was when you saw him.

The stage was bare, because the theatre club was in between productions. He hadn’t been doing anything spectacular to catch your attention, yet something stopped you from continuing out to your car.

Minhyuk was just lying on his back in the center of the stage singing a gentle tune you found really familiar. The peaceful aura of it all made you stop to listen. You felt like a creeper afterwards, but your feet had just frozen in place backstage like he was some sort of siren luring you in.

Except his song wouldn’t lead you out to sea to drown; Instead it was a one-way trip to heartbreak.

Still, you let yourself listen for a while. Minhyuk’s voice was beautiful to you, husky and warm with excellent timbre. Goosebumps rose on your arms at a beautiful vaulting high note that resounded through the theatre effortlessly. He cursed when he fumbled over the next phrase then started it again.

You could’ve fallen for the boy you saw in that moment.

He was unbridled, freely singing whatever song came to mind not caring how his face looked or how his uniform wrinkled. For once the typical smirk wasn’t permanently attached to his lips. Instead he smiled. A genuine one at that. The ghost light illuminated one side of his face, and the glow settled into his features - sharpening his elegant bone structure.

That boy. The one before your eyes, was one you could see yourself enjoying the company of. Unfortunately, that boy was like that moment.

Fleeting.

Outside of that snapshot in time he was The Minhyuk of Monsta x, someone you should have wanted nothing to do with, and not just a cute boy with a nice voice. So, you’d turned yourself around and made to leave with the intent of him never knowing you were there.

Unfortunately, fate wasn’t having that.

In the darkness you kicked a table by accident and that caused something else to fall with a loud bang. You hadn't even glanced back before darting out as quick as you could.

Every time you saw Minhyuk after that you couldn’t shake the image of him from that day or your hopeless feelings.

Music room 3 was essentially his. The entire student body knew this room was always reserved for him after classes. Trying not to disturb the boy was a school-wide event when passing through the western hallway. And now you were sitting on his floor asking him to use the wrath of his group on you.

As if things couldn’t get worse.

“Hey, are you alright.” He questioned you again.

Despite all you thought you knew about him; You didn’t look so scary right now, concern in his eyes as they roamed the burn. His gaze didn’t feel even vaguely threatening – more like he was trying to discern how to help opposed to checking you out. It took a second for you to remember you sat there with your shirt open.

The two of you came to that conclusion at the same moment. His eyes snapped to your face and you scrambled cross your arms in front of you but yelped instantly at the stab of pain the action sent through you.

Alarm filled his eyes, but he seemed to read the discomfort on your face, because he swiftly turned his back and faced away from you.

“Shit, I’m sorry y/n.” He choked out. “I wasn’t trying to – I mean – Ah, sorry.”

Smooth

It surprised you though. You weren’t aware he even knew your name.

The rumors said he’d be the type to take advantage of your exposure and try to flirt with you or use some pick-up line, but he seemed more flustered than you. The little bit of privacy his action gave you was comforting and you had to admit it was gentlemanly – until panic about who you were talking to set in.

“I-I’m sorry! I didn’t realize what room this was I just-”

“Don’t worry about it.”

His composure was back and the level voice he used was almost soothing even when you couldn’t see his face. You found yourself relaxing. His tone was warm, so maybe you could get yourself out of this without making him angry. It was just going to be awkward talking to the back of his head.

“What happened?” Minhyuk asked.

“It’s just a coffee burn.” You answered vaguely while you thought of ways to get out of the room. Minhyuk hummed in thought and you found it endearing.

Okay scratch that - You needed to get out of this room before you ended up leaving your heart somewhere risky.

Namely – with him.

“You spill it on yourself?” Minhyuk surprised you by continuing his questions. He was nonchalant about it, but there was something else in his voice that definitely wasn’t indifference.

“No.” You couldn’t find it in yourself to try and lie to him. Not that it mattered. The entire school had probably heard about the scene earlier anyways

“Was it an accident?”

You bit your lip and hesitated. His voice that used to hold a softness was growing hard. Angry. The tension in his shoulders was coiling like a spring. You didn’t understand the reaction, but it made you nervous regardless.

“No.” you answered airily.

His next words were so quiet you strained to hear them.

“Someone purposefully threw boiling coffee on you.” He was beyond mad now and it gave you chills. Not seeing his expression only made it worse.

Minhyuk was the hardest one to anger, and those who managed it - transferred schools. And now you were in the same room with a livid Monsta x member. You just thanked your stars that it wasn’t directed at you.

He released a long exhale that mostly dissolved the tension and you subconsciously breathed with him. You had wanted to leave, but now curiosity had you in its grip. That much anger wasn’t a normal reaction to someone you didn’t know being hurt. Pity – maybe - but not rage.

“How bad is it?” Another question that threw you off.

Glancing down at the red splotches didn’t give you much information and your mind was still a little out of focus. You were burned, that was a given – You just didn’t know how badly.

“I can’t really tell.”

He used the same soothing voice again. “Just describe it to me, I can get an idea.”

“It’s – ah – bright red. No blisters or anything like that. And it feels warm, uh, maybe just a little swollen?”

The sigh of relief you heard from him almost made you giggle before you remembered who he was. He wasn’t supposed to be remotely cute, and you weren’t supposed to start thinking maybe he wasn’t as bad as he wanted people to think. But he was, and you were.

“It doesn’t sound too serious, That’s good.” You almost felt you could hear the smile in his voice.

“I have an extra shirt.” He didn’t have to ask in the form of a question - you knew he was trying to give you something to change into.

Before you could question his kindness he walked over to his bag sitting against the wall and pulled out a white T-shirt. Then he clamped one hand over his eyes before turning to walk towards you. You figured he spent enough time in the room to know the layout without looking.

You couldn’t stop yourself from letting your eyes roam his face while he couldn’t see you. He was as handsome as you remembered; that fact was easy to admit. A strong jaw line, surprisingly delicate lips, the glowing deep brown orbs hidden behind his hand. He looked adorably innocent blocking his eyes like that. It was a look you’d seen only once on his face before.

Not that you looked at him a lot or anything.

And now not only was he handsome, but he was secretly kind as well. His continued effort to respect your modesty was endearing in a way. You were starting to have a harder time ignoring the interest you had for the boy.

It was easier when you could blind yourself with nasty rumors, but the person you’d seen in the auditorium that night was turning out to be more real than you thought.

You stood up to meet him halfway, and after you accepted his shirt he turned back around again.

When you unfolded it, you couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped you.

On the front there was a little cartoon design of a tea bag with the words ‘It’s a tea-shirt’ written underneath. You thought you saw his ears go a little red for a second, but you brushed it away. You slid your shirt all the way off your shoulders and cringed at the soggy plop it made when it hit the floor. The lighter material of his shirt felt a lot more comfortable against your skin

“Thank you.” You said to his back and he understood that you were decent.

He finally faced you and you smiled hesitantly.

He smiled at you for the first time and you kind of understood the girls who fell at his feet. It was a smile worth begging for. His eyes lingered on his shirt for a second.

“You’re welcome. It, ah, looks good on you.” There was an awkward pause where you wrung your hands, he scratched the back of his neck, and you battled it out to see who could blush the most until he spoke again. “Listen, ah, maybe you should go to the nurse I’m sure- “

“No!” You cut him off and flinched at the volume of your own voice. “I-I’d have to walk past the cafeteria again and...”

You hoped your classmates’ anger had faded now that she’d acted out and humiliated you in public, but you were sure she was still vengeful. The internship was a rare one that many people had wanted. It wouldn’t be surprising if more students agreed with her actions. The thought scared you a little.

He’d obviously read the narrative in your eyes, because his face softened immediately.

“You can stay here. I mean, I wouldn't let anyone bother you.”

He was starting to get into the habit of surprising you at every turn. So far Minhyuk had been chivalrous, generous, and nothing like you’d convinced yourself he was. Maybe you were wrong to dismiss what you’d seen that night. Maybe ‘The Minhyuk of Monsta x’ was really the false one.

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to interrupt.” The protest was a weak one and you knew it. You wanted to stay too - much more than you were ready to admit.

“Believe me I’ve practiced enough, it’d be nice to have a break.” You knew you could never resist that look he was giving you anyways: his eyes vulnerable, sensitive, brown pools.

“Okay.”

You couldn’t think of anything else to say and he stayed quiet, so eventually you moved to sit on the piano bench and he joined you soon after. Minhyuk started to play a song and sing lowly to the tune as a way to break the silence.

The piece was what he’d been singing the night you saw him in the auditorium.

It was a bittersweet song about young lovers who never shared their feelings and that caused them to let each other drift away. It suited his slightly raspy voice.

You let yourself watch his profile as he played. Minhyuk closed his eyes and rocked his shoulders along to the tempo. His graceful fingers floated across the keys gently if not reverently, and the piano responded with the bittersweet melody you’d come to associate with the beautiful man in front of you.

The emotions in the song were clear in his entire being, and while his entire body reacted to the music; you had a moment of crystal-clear clarity.

The bad image you’d built of him shattered.

Music was a language you understood, more than words sometimes, and he was sending a message direct to you.

The is the real Minhyuk.

He looked up from the piano as you started singing along and caught your eyes. The corners of his mouth quirked up into a grin that lit up his face. The expression juxtaposed the sorrowful lyrics yet it still felt slightly sad somehow.

A smile grew on your face too. You looked away but couldn’t wipe it from your lips as he played the final bridge of the song. You would’ve been content to just bask in the calm aura instead of facing the problems that were burying you under their weight. The last note had long faded when he finally spoke again, softly, like he didn’t want to break the moment.

“Can you tell me everything that happened now?”

And so, you did. You told him about being chosen for the scholarship and your classmate’s reaction. Then the coffee and the humiliation that came later. By the time you finished with your entrance into the music room he was already on his feet, pacing.

Then his face set into the mask you now recognized as fake Minhyuk. Angry Minhyuk. Monsta x's Minhyuk.

He basically growled his next words as he strode to the door. “You stay here. There are some people who need to be set straight.”

“Woah, woah wait.” You were barely able to stop him from getting to his destination by sliding between him and the door.

Minhyuk stared down at you with an intensity that made you forget the words you’d intended to say next for a second. Noticing that you’d laid both hands flat against his chest was enough to jolt you back into the moment as you pulled your hands away. “You don’t really know me, why do you want to go out and defend my honor.”

“I’ve noticed you y/n.” He admitted in a soft voice.

He really needed to stop rendering you speechless. You’d daydreamed the exact words coming out of his mouth, yet it was still so hard to believe them – so you reflexively tried to deny what he was saying.

“How? I-I mean we’ve never really talked- “

“It was your music." He was quick to explain himself. "Wonho let me hear your music and I’ve been intrigued ever since. The way you make music is just captivating.”

You could hear the bashful note in his voice at the admission.

Oh sweet mother of music production.

You knew you’d frozen up. It was just hard to form a coherent thought when the literal man of your dreams had just admitted he cared for you.

It wasn’t unusual that Wonho had heard your song considering you’d both competed against each other.  What as unusual was that he’d liked it – enough to get a copy and show it to his friends.

Minhyuk leaned down until your gazes crossed paths again and he spoke his next words in a way that not even your mind could argue with. “You’re Talented, driven, intelligent, beautiful Y/N. I’d been trying to think of a way to talk to you for weeks, but I didn’t know how."

All the little things you’d made yourself discount over the months flashed like a montage in your mind.

The times you’d seen him pop into the studio with Wonho while you were working on something and they’d hang around for a second longer than they needed to. Or when snacks would show up on your desk when you skipped lunch. The one time a classmate started bullying you, but the next day he showed up to class he didn’t even look at you.

You’d think with the amount of time you spent paying attention to him, you’d have realized he was doing it right back.

“I notice you too.” The words escaped before you could stop them. “I don’t know why, T-there’s just something about you.”

“Devilishly good looks.” He teased while pushing a stray piece of hair behind your ear.

You not immediately rejecting him ramped up his confidence it seemed, yet you saw the insecurity he was covering with the joke. He was afraid to let you in. 

“No. It’s – You’re free.” You laughed lightly before continuing. “No one tells you who to be, what to do, how to live. I wish I could be more like that.”

Idly, you reached out to fix the collar of his shirt just to give your hands something to do.

“It’s lonely to be like me.” He let his hand come to rest against your cheek. The warning did little to affect you as you leaned into the contact. Although, the wistful expression written in his features made your chest ache just a little. .

It seemed tragic he felt like he needed to warn you off.

Little did he know you were far beyond the point of no return.

“It doesn’t have to be. If you let someone in.” You allowed your hands to once again lay on his chest. From the look in his eyes you could tell the idea scared him, but you tried your best to convey your sincerity.

You wanted him to know that you were prepared to accept anything that came with being with him, but he changed the subject before you could organize your thoughts.

“I knew you were there; That night in the theatre.” Minhyuk was trying to lead the conversation somewhere, so you decided to go with it.

“I figured. I wasn’t very quiet, I’m sorry-“

“Don’t be Y/N. It’s been a long time since someone has looked at me and seen more than a delinquent or some hot guy to conquest.”

There was that intense sadness again. You moved your hand to run it through his hair and smiled at him. He looked at you with an extremely cute confused face.

“Minhyuk, before that day I believed what people said, that you were dangerous.” You felt him tense, but you pushed on quickly. “But then that night I saw this side to you that wasn’t at all what I expected. I was just afraid that wasn’t real. But then today you turned out to really be that guy I saw on stage singing with his heart and you continue to surprise me at every turn.”

The sad look softened to a tenderness as he finally seemed to get that you weren’t going to run screaming anytime soon. Minhyuk let himself lean forward that last few inches needed to press his forehead against yours.

“I want to get to know you.” He whispered before drawing back a few inches to meet your eyes. “You’re way too good for me, and I know I have a reputation, but-”

It was your turn to cut him off. “Minhyuk. I think I’m done listening to what people who don’t know you say. I’m want to decide for myself, and I want to get to know you too.”

His smile was blinding when he pulled you into his arms fully.

After a few moments he spoke up. “I’m still going to put the fear of god into them for hurting my girlfriend.”

You laughed and pulled yourself from his hold playfully only to laugh harder at the pout on his lips. “Oh? And when did we decide that I’m your girlfriend, Lee Minhyuk?”

He pretended to think for a second before dropping a surprise kiss on your forehead. “Right now?”

He gave you puppy dog eyes that rivaled any Casanova’s until you gave in – not that you were fighting him anyways – it was just fun to banter with him. You sighed in mock annoyance while he laced his hands with yours. Already, you knew that look was one you’d never be able to refuse.

“You’re lucky I like you, Weirdo.” You teased.

“Ditto.” Minhyuk replied in a sing-song voice while leading you to the door.

You pointed a finger at him as you walked out of the music room. “And Lee Minhyuk, don’t you dare beat up people for me.”

He had to cross his eyes to see your finger and the expression nearly cracked your serious façade. He moved your hand like it was a loaded weapon before responding.

“Okay… But only because you asked.” He took a breath when a new idea hit him. “And only if you cool it with the full name thing. It makes me feel like I’m in trouble.”

“Okay.” You paused before whispering with mischief. “Lee Minhyuk.”

“Yah that’s it!” He moved to tickle your sides, but he never got close to touching you because you stood on your toes and pressed your lips to his. Later, you could question why you decided to do it, but right then it was everything you thought it would be. After a few seconds he caught up to you and Minhyuk's hands came to rest on your shoulders lightly – pulling you in an inch more.

He only broke off when a familiar voice called out from down the hallway. The voice you could only associate with coffee and the burn across your chest.

“Oh, so you found yourself a boy to leech off of, Y/n.” The girl scoffed. “I knew you were poor. I just didn’t think you were desperate.”

Without looking you could already tell she couldn’t see Minhyuk’s face from her angle, and before you could stop him he lunged into her sightline. You watched her eyes widen in shock.

“That’s not how I’d define ‘desperate’.” His voice was calm but held enough venom to freeze your classmate on the spot. The cold laugh that came next made even you uncomfortable.

“No – desperate is the way you trail behind Jooheon every hour of the day for even one second of his attention-“

By then your classmate had dropped her gaze and you could hear her sniffles. As much as you wanted to indulge in some revenge, humiliating her right back wasn’t a low you would stoop to. Right as Minhyuk made to step closer to her, your hand closed around his wrist.

“That’s enough, Minhyuk.” He glanced back at you with two raised eyebrows and you only shook your head at him. “Let her go.”

Your classmate was long gone not even seconds after he waved her away.

Alone again, Minhyuk wrapped you up in his arms again and lightly kissed your temple. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” You replied, settling in his grip.

“You deserve that internship, you know? Don’t let her make you feel like you don’t.”

Remember that seed of doubt? His words helped you uproot it.

“I know.”

You let him comfortably hold you for a few minutes and the tension melted away from both of you. Then you felt Minhyuk tap your back slightly and you drew back to see him deep in thought.

“You know….” He paused. “You never said I couldn’t ask Hyungwon to beat them up.”

“Minhyuk no” You laughed.

“Catch me if you can!” He called while taking off at full speed towards the parking lot.

You prepared to run after him until an idea struck you.

“Hey Minhyuk!” You yelled. “I love you.”

You waited a few seconds until you heard footsteps coming back your way. He swept you right back into his hold, kissed you fully again, and whispered in your ear.

“Ditto.”

“Oh no, he’s hot” Part II

A/N: This is so much fun, I’ll have to write more multi-part series! I hope you enjoy it! 

Request: Yay, thank you!! So basically, I was wondering how Pidge would react to realizing that their close friend is having an “oh no he’s hot” moment when they meet Matt for the 1st time, which escalates to an ‘oh /no/ he’s hot and smART AND FUNNY AND /NICE OH NO/“ moment after talking to him. (friend isn’t experienced with crushes, and does a pretty good job of ignoring it until he leaves, and doesn’t want to admit that they’re 100% doomed/whipped). Whatever format you want! Thanks lovely!!

Summary: Reader meets Matt, and get’s a letter from the galaxy garrison. There is a lot of fluff. 

Part I

Part III

Word count: 1484

“I’m so excited for this weekend!” Katie exclaimed one morning as we drove to school. She bounced in her seat, her hands under her thighs. She seemed to be trying her best to hold still, but her excitement overrode that. “Matt has today off, and I want you two to meet!”

Ahh, Matt. The famous Holt sibling that, after nearly two months of knowing Katie, I had still not met. I was beginning to think he was made up, an imaginary figure that her parents went along with for too long. Of course, I didn’t say any of this, but I still thought it was very weird.

“He’s really excited to meet you. I showed him a picture, he thinks you’re beautiful.”

My cheeks heated up and my heart skipped a beat. He thinks I’m beautiful? Nobody had ever said anything like that to me… “Well,” I said, trying to keep my trembling voice steady, “I can’t wait to meet him, either.”

Katie grinned, and turned up the radio. Together, we sang at the top of our lungs, not caring how terrible we sounded or who could possibly hear us. It was fun. As we exited my truck, I realized how much of a little sister Katie had become to me. She was everything I’d ever wanted in one.

School dragged on. I was anxious to meet Matt. After hearing so much about him, it was almost like I had met him already. Time seemed to slow down just to torture me--a minute felt like an hour, five minutes like a year, an hour like a century. Every word out of my history teacher’s mouth slowed it down even more, with his droning voice about the advances in space travel and how it affected the human race.

More than once I considered calling my mom to ask her to call me out of school, but what would I do? March over to the Holt’s home and introduce myself? “Oh, hey, I know this is awkward but I’m Katie’s friend, Y/N”? Absolutely not. I really didn’t feel like just lounging around, waiting to meet him, either. Sitting on my couch while watching tv would only make my anxiety worse. At least at school I had something to take my mind off of the butterflies fluttering around in my stomach...

Katie seemed to be just as anxious as I did. When she normally would have been chatting my ear off at lunch, she was oddly quiet. Neither of us wanted to say anything. I didn’t even have the energy to go study in the library.

The drive home was quiet, too. We tried listening to music, but it did little to easy the discomfort that settled in our stomachs. The only thing that either of us said was when I asked if Matt would be at her house by the time we got home. She said yes, and a few minutes later, we pulled into my driveway.

Matt was sitting on the front steps of his home, leaning his elbows on his knees and watching my driving with a small smile. Katie hopped out of the truck before I even parked and ran to greet him.

I watched them for a few seconds, as she said something to him and pointed to me with a wide smile. Matt looked at me, our eyes met, and immediately, I muttered to myself, “Oh no, he’s hot…” My cheeks turned red, and as embarrassed as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to look away. I smiled and waved.

Matt gulped quite visibly and adjusted his glasses. His cheeks, too, were a little rosy. Katie said something to him, causing his cheeks to turned an even darker shade of red.

I opened the door and jumped out of my truck. “Hey!” I said, smiling at Matt. “You must be Katie’s older brother! She’s told me so much about you, I feel like I already know you!”

“All good things, I hope,” Matt said (his voice cracked a little, which I found cute) and scratched the back of his head.

“I haven’t heard a single negative thing.”

Matt smiled. He stuck his hand out, which I took and shook, and he introduced himself.

Goodness, his eyes are beautiful…

“I’m Y/N.”

“Pidge has told me a lot about you, as well. You’re practically an older sibling to her,” Matt told me. He still hadn’t let go of my hand, but I hardly noticed.

“She’s like a sister to me, but she didn’t tell me her brother is so cute.”

Crap. Oh no. No no no no no. Did I seriously just say that? Our eyes widened and entire faces turned red. I’ve never in my entire life been that bold.

Matt recovered quicker that I did, however, and said, “Well, if you’re pretty and I’m cute, then I guess together we’d be pretty cute.”

“That’s disgusting,” Katie commented. “Come on, let’s get some snacks and watch a movie together! Or maybe we could play a board game--you guys can get to know each other better during that!”

We turned to look at her.

“Not Monopoly, though,” Matt said.

“Yeah. That game destroys friendships, not builds them.”

“Candyland, then?” Katie smirked at me then at her brother.

“Yes please,” I answered. Then I grabbed Katie by the arm and dragged her with me to the house. “If you say anything to embarrass me,” I hissed, “I will make you walk to school for the rest of the year.” I didn’t mean it, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t threaten her, did it?

Katie’s eyes widened. She made the motion of locking her lips and throwing away the key, and nodded. “I won’t say anything that reveals that I ship you guys harder than I’ve ever shipped anything in my entire life.”

“Good. Good.”

Four months later, Pidge and Matt crowded around me, eagerly waiting for me to open a letter. Matt’s chest was pressed against my shoulder, his head hovering dangerously close to mine, and had one hand on the opposite shoulder. Pidge, as I now called her, leaned over my other shoulder and bounced excitedly on her knees.

I, now graduated from high school, had applied to the galaxy garrison and had waited anxiously to hear whether or not I would I had been accepted. Now that I had my letter, I suddenly didn’t want to open it. The contents of this letter would either make or break my future, and I was terrified.

“I don’t think I can do it,” I admitted, lowering the envelope. “What if I don’t get in?”

“Then they’re missing an awesome addition,” Matt told me. He got off of my shoulder and positioned himself so that he was sitting next to me on the Holt’s front porch. “If you get in, then that’s awesome! We can drive there together every day. If you don’t,” he looked at me, a smile on his face, “then I’ll still like you.” Then, he added hastily, “And-and so will Pidge. We’ll both be your friends. Right?”

“Yeah,” Pidge agreed. “Plus, there’s always next year. That’s when I’m applying.”

I nodded and began to open the envelope. I pulled the pieces of paper out and stood up, walking a few feet away from the Holt siblings, so that I could have some sort of privacy reading the thing that determined my future.

“Well?” Pidge asked. “Did you get in?”

I held up a finger. I hadn’t read that part yet. Then, I read it. “We are pleased to accept you…” I put a hand over my mouth and dropped the papers. My chest constricted and eyes filled with tears.

“What is it?” Pidge questioned. “Did you not get in?”

I nodded and laughed, beginning to smile. “I did!” I croaked.

Matt launched up from the steps and ran forward to hug me. Even though it was a billion degrees outside and we were all sweating like pigs, his embrace was warm, and I found that I liked the feeling of his arms around me. He kissed my cheek and pulled away, holding me at arm’s length. “See? I told you that you would get in! You’re amazing!”

I smiled and thanked him. I could have sworn his cheeks were red, but Pidge had latched herself onto me to hug me as well, effectively breaking my gaze away from Matt before I had time to determine whether or not he was blushing. She chattered on, and pulled the two of us inside. Matt told me a little bit about what to expect on my first day there, and even though I’d heard the same speech a million times from my father, I hung onto every word he spoke, desperate for a little insight. There was no such thing as too much advice for your first day of school, was there?

What If…? Episode 6 Review: Killmonger to the Rescue

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This review contains spoilers for Marvel’s What If…? episode 6.

Episode 6 of Marvel’s What If…?, entitled “What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?”, might be the flattest episode to come out of the series so far, but it at least works in the way the other Disney+ Marvel shows work. It takes a character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe who didn’t get quite enough time in the spotlight and gives us more. In this case, it’s the charismatic Black Panther villain Erik “Killmonger” Stevens.

As he was only relevant to the Black Panther movie, we get to see the character step out of that bubble and interact with some other MCU mainstays. His connection with Tony Stark cheats the world out of Iron Man, but there’s the question of whether the situation might have a positive effect on Killmonger’s soul, like how his cousin T’Challa inspired Thanos and Yondu to be better people in a different alternate reality. Once that question is answered, the episode meanders until abruptly ending.

If you regularly read our weekly What If…? reviews (try saying that three times fast) you may already know that these pieces have their own unique format. It’s more of a breakdown that we hope will satisfy die-hard Marvel fans but help bring those less familiar with the MCU up to speed.

Alright, let’s get into “What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?”…

Required viewing

The two main movies you need to see are Iron Man and Black Panther. The whole nexus event of the episode revolves around Tony Stark’s superhero origin, but you don’t need to check out his sequels (even if the Stark drones resemble Whiplash’s handiwork from Iron Man 2). The scene where we meet Ulysses Klaue is an alternate take on his introduction in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but watching that movie is not a necessity for this story.

Voice cast

As always, Uatu the Watcher is Jeffrey Wright. In the Black Panther corner, we get plenty of returning voices like Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, the late Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther, Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda, John Kani as King T’Chaka, Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue, and Danai Gurira as Okoye. On the Iron Man side, Don Cheadle is James Rhodes, Jon Favreau is Happy Hogan, Paul Bettany is JARVIS, and Leslie Bibb is Christine Everhart.

For those replacing the original actors, Mick Wingert is Tony Stark, Beth Hoyt is Pepper Potts, Ozioma Akagha is Shuri, Mike McGuill is General Thaddeus Ross, and Kiff Vandenheuvel is Obadiah Stane. I mean, I guess Don Cheadle as James Rhodes also sort of counts here, but that’s just splitting hairs.

What’s different?

The military career of Navy Seal Erik Stevens, codename Killmonger, brings him to infiltrating the Ten Rings and uncovering a plan to capture Tony Stark and use him to arm the terrorist organization. Acting on this information, Killmonger appears during the Ten Rings’ violent attempt to grab Stark. When the Stark-branded bomb lands near its creator, Stark is saved at the last second by Killmonger, who throws the bomb into the distance and outguns the would-be kidnappers.

In this reality, Stark’s heart is never pierced with shrapnel and he never finds himself having to build a robot suit…in a CAVE! With a BOX OF SCRAPS! He also doesn’t learn his lesson as he chooses to continue making weapons and even doubles down on it. Killmonger earns his trust further by exposing Obadiah Stane as being part of the kidnapping plot. Stark chooses to promote Killmonger to Stane’s old position (fitting, since Stane’s villain name is Warmonger) and he invests in an old idea of Killmonger’s to create mech-like drones.

Pepper Potts is uneasy with all of this, feeling that Killmonger is hiding his true intentions.

The drones can’t be completed due to the lack of a viable power source. Stark considers Arc Reactor technology, but discards the idea as a pipe dream. Killmonger talks up how vibranium could do it and sacrifices his necklace heirloom to make it work. Inspired, Stark decides to set up a meeting with Ulysses Klaue to buy more vibranium off the black market. James Rhodes acts on Stark’s behalf and that’s when things break down.

Black Panther interrupts the meeting to take back his country’s vibranium. Killmonger appears, subdues both Black Panther and Rhodes, and kills them both. Though not before he chastises Rhodey for working for a broken system that oppresses people like them. He makes it appear that the two killed each other, visits Stark (who is aware of the truth), kills him, and spells it out that the two never truly shared the same vision. As Stark dies from a vibranium spear, the Dora Milaje is blamed and war begins to brew between the United States and Wakanda.

Killmonger kills Klaue and uses his corpse to enter Wakanda and earn the trust of his estranged royal family. He sets up a battle against the Stark drones and leads the Wakandans to victory.

How does it work out?

It’s very open-ended, but it’s a dour situation. King T’Chaka makes Killmonger the new Black Panther. It’s only a matter of time before Killmonger betrays his uncle and gets his long-awaited revenge, showing that even in this reality, Tony Stark inadvertently sets things in motion for T’Chaka getting assassinated. T’Challa confronts Killmonger in the Panther spirit realm and warns him that his actions will have dire consequences.

Meanwhile, Shuri is not fooled by Killmonger’s charms and works with Pepper Potts in hoping to expose Killmonger and prevent the war from escalating.

Standout moments

One of the absolute highlights is the moment of Stark looking over Killmonger’s schematics for his drone idea, which look very Gundam-like. Killmonger sheepishly admits that he likes anime, which is a subtle, in-universe way for the character to admit that his blue, armored uniform is absolutely him trying to steal Vegeta’s look.

The press conference is incredibly satisfying, just in the sense that Killmonger shuts down Stane’s schemes with receipts and confidence, easily nipping that problem in the bud. Happy punching Stane out cold is the icing on the cake. It makes me think about how the plot of Iron Man is incredibly obvious for those who speak Urdu as the Ten Rings terrorists straight-up tell the viewer that Obadiah Stane is behind the kidnapping.

Speaking of the Ten Rings, their involvement certainly feels like it has more weight to it after Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. How fitting that Killmonger would make such a strong foil to the Ten Rings’ leader Wenwu, who is also obsessed with a secretive and fantastic utopian society that considers him an outsider despite a familial connection.

We get our third Chadwick Boseman performance in this series and once again, it hits hard in its own way. The Star-Lord episode was like a celebration of T’Challa that talked up his potential to make the universe a better place. The zombie episode had him give a meaningful speech about remembering the dead and keeping their memories in your heart. Now we see T’Challa’s casket and see him appear as a spirit.

Also, man, for someone who is the key to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man has not been doing so good on this show. He’s made three appearances so far and he’s died each time. The comic version of What If…? was never too kind to the likes of Magneto, Loki, Kingpin, or Beast, and now it looks like Stark is their television counterpart.

I think there’s supposed to be an episode coming up about him ending up on Sakaar, so let’s hope he does better that time around.

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See you next week! Same Watcher time! Same Watcher streaming service! In the meantime, if you want to dig deeper into What If…?, subscribe to Marvel Standom on the Den of Geek YouTube channel, where we dish out weekly episodes on all the new Marvel TV series, trailers and movie releases. Can’t stand our faces? That’s fair! You can listen to Marvel Standom on Spotify and Apple, too.

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Get To Know Your Author

Tagged by @eastofthemoon!

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

There’s a book called Dove Isabeau that I loved as a kid, and also I loved the movie Ladyhawk, and Isabeau was one of the main characters.

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos).

Room with a View (although Can’t Take the Sky From Me was a very close second  - I had to do actual math to figure it out; I’m impressed I remember how to math.)

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

I don’t have one. I never bothered to upload it. If I did, it would be the same as the one for this account. It’s my cat Nibbs laying on my foot not long after we found him in my parents’ backyard. I use it because he’s cute and fluffy, and because I don’t like pictures of me floating around the internet.

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

I love all my commenters! It’s always exciting to get the notice that someone took the time to comment and I go back and reread them all all the time.

@maychorian​ has commented on a bunch of my Voltron fics (almost all of them I think), and I’m always super excited when I see her comments because she leaves such excellent and well thought out ones.

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

Hound by story_monger I come back to because it’s so well done. The writing is fantastic, and the sense of suspense is amazing, and I really love the way it dealt with different layers of trauma and wove together the way past trauma continued to impact how present trauma was processed and dealt with. Plus the team was wonderfully tender with Keith, and he got cuddles.

Hyggelig by heyheroics I’ve gone back and reread a couple times. It is an example of the ever rare, non-romantic Keith and Lance center story. Well written and even though it’s not finished, the chapters read as short stories, so I’m not left with cliff hangers. I’m always excited when it updates.

I reread pieces from @maychorian​ all the time, particularly from the Boom Crash series and the Dream Seam series (*whispers* a lot of the time I skip straight to the cuddles. She writes the best cuddles.)

The Raised by Lions series by @eastofthemoon​ I like to go back and reread. Red and her strange furless cub are super fun to read about, and then Shiro comes along and there is even more fluff and cuddles.

Basically there’s a shortage of platonic fluff and cuddles in the Voltron fandom and when I run out, I go back and re-read my favorite cuddles.

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

I have like 12 bookmarked and 4 subscriptions. I always forget that’s a thing you can do on AO3.

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

.... so many. I’ve been working on The Five Lion Cafe au lately, trying to finish up the next one (almost done *fingers crossed*), and Mermaid Rescue and Rehab Inc. is up next on my list to finish, so I’ve been picking on that. 

I’d like to get back to Babe’s in Space at some point. I have general outlines for lots of short stories in that AU, and there actually is a bigger over arching plot if I ever get to it.

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

91 subscriptions and 992 bookmarks

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

Mostly platonic physical intimacy, just because I don’t want to deal with it being labeled as romantic or shippy (I guess that’s not so much a fear of being judged as just not feeling like dealing with other people’s reactions). Once something is posted, you have no control over how it’s received or interpreted. That’s just the nature of publishing something; you have to let it go (or drive yourself crazy trying to force people to see it only the way you want, which is just not worth the time or energy).

Because of that, I sometimes pull back from writing a scene as intimate as I’d like, or I choose a slightly different approach to it, just because I don’t want to deal with seeing it labeled as a ship in the tags and comments.

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

Action sequences and creating suspense. It’s hard to translate the movie-like images in my head into words for action sequences. I watch a lot of youtube videos for reference when I’m trying to write them.

And suspense, when done well, is just a great thing to be able to do. It keeps the reader engaged and makes the piece more exciting.

Also replying to comments! They mean so much to me, and I’m so terrible at replying.

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

Not really? I guess Ronin and Tara from Epic qualify as a rarepair just because the fandom for Epic is so small. I think the idea of Ezor and Kolivan from Voltron being a crack pair (not one that ever would or should show up in canon) is hysterical, but I haven’t written anything for them yet.

I really just don’t ship much in general.

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

As of December 22, 2018, I have 49 stories up on AO3, all of them finished. I never start posting a story unless it’s already done.

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

So, that’s really hard to calculate. For every fandom I have what amounts to a dump document where I write random scenes and stories that I’m not sure will go any where, in addition to that I have:

Epic - 14 docs, most of those are probably single stories

ROTG - 9 docs, but I don’t think I separated out many of the WIPs from my main dump doc, so there’s probably more WIP there.

Voltron - 15 docs, but some of those documents are for series, so there’s might be multiple WIPs in the document.

And that’s just the unfinished stuff. I didn’t include the stories that are done. I usually keep those on my hard drive too because I don’t trust the internet not to suddenly eat my work.

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

I keep them in my head way too often, then go back to stories I’ve set down for a couple months (or years) and don’t remember what was going to happen. I’m trying to get better about writing out at least a general outline for stories so that doesn’t happen.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

I have co-authored with @eastofthemoon and @ladydouji. I’m kind of a flake about writing though and I’m really bad at keeping deadlines with something I just do for fun, so I don’t team up very often.

16. How did you discover AO3?

Google search for fanfiction because there wasn’t enough decent stuff on ff.net.

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

I don’t think so? I don’t pay much attention so I don’t have much bases for comparison.

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

Nope.

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

I read a lot growing up (not so much now - grad school does a really good job burning you out when it comes to reading). I loved fantasy mostly, and a little bit of sci-fi, although that’s never been a super sharp distinction for me.

Patricia McKillip is my favorite author. I absolutely love the way she writes and the way she crafts stories. I really enjoyed Jane Yolen, and Bruce Coville too.

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

I really like Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing.

The most important thing you can do is write. Get the words on the paper. That’s really the hardest part. I like his last rule best though “Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly and tell it as best you can.”

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

I usually know where they’re going (in my head at least, by the time I actually start getting words on the page), but sometimes they end up taking unexpected turns or new scenes show up out of now where while I’m writing. That’s part of what makes writing exciting. 

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

Nothing terrible, but a few (at least one of which went over my head until years later because they were being sarcastic).

I find I have an increasingly low reserve of energy, and things like that are not worth spending it on. I just ignore them.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

Interpersonal conflict! Why would these two normally rational people who care about each other let a thing escalate to the point of them actually fighting over it, or having it damaging their relationship, or coming to blows over it? And how do I write that in a way that doesn’t sound contrived and is in character to everyone involved.

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

Right now I’m working on finishing up the next Five Lions Cafe story, and also working on the last of the Mermaid Rescue and Rehab series.

I’m also working on a story that is probably going to be called Bad Moon on the Rise, and is focused on Lance and the Red Lion’s bond (and also has quintessence vampires).

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

Yes! My brain never stops planning stories. Never.

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

Not really. Sometimes I’ll got through stretches where I write a lot, and other times my brain just melts and refuses to make words.

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

Yes! Even just going back a few years, but I’ve been writing since I was in elementary school, so there has been a great deal of improvement from the epic and fully illustrated “There are dinosaur ghosts living in our playground” that I wrote in first grade (and tried to convince my teacher was true).

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

It’s actually not even up on AO3. It’s the only Narnia fanfic I ever wrote, and it’s called Refuge. One of those things that just felt unfinished and unaddressed in the Prince Caspian movie, and I like how I addressed it.

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

*Snorts* Thankfully lost to the great ether of individual fan sites that no longer exist, I had some CATS fanfics that were pretty terrible.

There’s also some Ronin Warriors stuff, and I think some stuff from the original Voltron dub, that’s pretty terrible, but I don’t have the heart to take down because people were actually kind enough to leave nice comments on them.

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

The same, but hopefully better at it. I don’t really have any aspirations to be a professional writer. I’m happy just doing it for fun.

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

The stories!

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

Putting the words on the page!

33. Why do you write?

Because it’s fun! And challenging! And it gets the things in my head out of my head!

Tagging: anyone who wants to. I think all the people I know on tumblr have already been tagged.

So,

Ryan was wielding his wrench like a weapon.

I’d known him for over a year by this point, and become acquainted with his peculiarities — just shy of an autism diagnosis, he had a propensity to rage monologue and exactly zero tolerance for small talk. He was a hulking blond metalwork artist struggling to keep a steady job, and he lived with his girlfriend Kate and his grandmother in a ramshackle house down in Lower Fairview. I’d seen him have a number of  but I’d never seen him worked up like this. The dude was literally vibrating.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Kate said some shit went down with Snapper?”

Ryan ran his grease-covered fingers through his hair, blinked at the sky, then spent some time sucking back air through his nostrils. Before I pulled up he’d been working on his latest project: a giant truck he’d salvaged from a Blewett junkyard that he was planning to spend the next few years restoring. A stripe of black ran through his right eyebrow.

“Let’s just say I haven’t murdered anyone yet. Kate should probably tell you the rest. You wanna smoke a joint inside?”

Once we passed through the entranceway I was happily greeted by Ryan’s grandmother, a white-haired Argenta woman fond of gabbing. She held us up for a moment with small-talk before we headed back to his bedroom, where Kate was sitting cross-legged on the bed rolling joints while watching some obscure British television series I’d never heard of. Ryan quickly gathered some laundry off a nearby computer chair so I could sit down, and Kate jumped up to give me a hug. We’d originally met through Paisley’s burlesque class and she’d quickly become one of my closest confidantes, a trusted ally I could go to when things got stressful at work or shitty at home.

“I was just over at Niles’ dispensary, and I heard some shit went down with Snapper? Like you got him fired or something?”

Kate laughed. “That dude’s lucky he’s not in jail. I had to physically restrain Ryan earlier.”

“What happened?”

If there was anyone who liked telling a story as much as I did, it was Kate. Her burlesque name was Lola Lane, and she was known for having a fiery and unapologetic personality. She was curvier than some of her contemporaries, passionate about body positivity, and was currently working at a high-end bra store on Baker Street. She put aside her rolling for a moment so she could fully engage, sweeping her hands through the air as she took me through the play-by-play.  

“So we’ve been going to Niles’ dispensary since it opened, as you know, and we’ve always been really good customers. But the thing is, you know, they just can’t compete with Phil’s prices.”

“Right, so?”

“Well, I guess I was talking about that, telling people that if they wanted to save money they should head across the street, and somebody must’ve told Snapper that I was disrespecting the business or whatever bullshit, so he messaged me and started saying all this crazy shit.”

“Snapper messaged you? What, like on Facebook?”

“I should show you. I can show you what he said, word for word. It was so unnecessarily aggressive.”

Ryan snorted in the corner, staring at his computer screen, but didn’t say anything. Kate lit one of the joints, taking a few exploratory hoots, then passed it my way. Her rolling skills were exemplary, and I held it up for a moment to admire its firm, bat-like construction.

“So what did you do?”

“I called their head office in Vancouver, and talked to the president of the company.”

I laughed. “Are you shitting me? The president?”

She smiled, pleased with herself. “Believe me, when I told her the things Snapper was saying she was absolutely shocked. She promised me that he would be fired immediately. She said they couldn’t be associated with that sort of behaviour, especially while they’re in this grey area legal zone.”

“Okay, seriously: what did he say?”

She pulled out her phone, scrolled through her messages for a moment, then handed it to me. There was a pretty tame back and forth as he accused her of bad-mouthing the dispensary and told her to stop, but then things escalated. He started calling her “cunt” and wrote “better watch yourself”. My eyes widened, and I looked up at her in alarm.

“That’s a straight up threat. You should report that to the police.”

“Oh, I did. Showed them my phone and everything. They said they’re looking into the matter, but that’s not all. He also texted Ryan.”

I looked over to where Ryan was puffing on the joint, still typing away at the computer. He was frowning like he was in pain, like he was holding something back, and when I asked him what Snapper said he just shook his head like he couldn’t even acknowledge it without blowing over. Kate walked over and picked up his phone, showed it to me.

Nice grandma you got there. Does she need help with sweeping?

I was confused. “What does that mean? I don’t get it.”

“Ryan’s grandma was sweeping outside earlier today. This fucker was outside our house, watching us. Like he literally came over here.”

“He’s lucky I didn’t see him,” said Ryan. “I would have disemboweled him on the spot, decapitated him with a butter knife and fucked the bloody neck hole. That piece of human excrement threatened an old fucking woman. That shit doesn’t fly in Nelson.”

“Snapper’s done,” Kate concluded.

“I always heard he was a piece of shit, mostly from Blayne. But he gets away with a lot because he’s related to Niles.”

Ryan scoffed. “He’s not untouchable. The guy has no idea how easily he could be disappeared. Call up a couple of my friends, get some black masks and it’s bye-bye time.”

“Plus he’s got his trial coming up.”

I was holding in a big toke, and released it. “Trial, for what?”

“Blayne didn’t tell you? He’s going on trial for rape. Remember that girl Marijke? That one you met last Halloween? She’s taking him to court for full-out sexual assault.”

“Holy shit.”

Kate continued rolling, laughing to herself. “I can’t wait til that asshole is in jail. He’s been getting away with this shit for too long. I mean, good for Marijke fucking holding him accountable like that because I guarantee you she’s not the first. He’s always perving on the young chicks, cruising around. I think one of his girlfriends was even underage.”

We chatted for another half an hour, eventually playing some YouTube videos and moving on to other subjects. We smoked a second joint together, then Kate brought us bowls of corn chips. Ryan was finally acting relaxed again, getting caught up in discussing fictional characters and comparing favourite movies. Eventually I stood up to head home, but before leaving I stopped in the doorway. The news about Snapper had jarred me a little bit, and I was picturing all the times he’d been in close proximity to Paisley. I knew he was a shady character, but rape was next level.

“Hey Ryan, you know that posse you mentioned? The black masks and everything?” I asked, standing in the doorway. He looked up and shrugged, a questioning look on his face.

“Count me in.”

The Kootenay Goon

Watching Empress of Mars for the first time

(tryna catch up before the last episodeairs like ohhh my gooood)

Possible spoilers below the cut in case I’m not the only one who’s running late.

-Okaaaaay we’re at.. NASA? That’s a first.

-The Doctor’s there too?

-Ohh. He wasn’t expected but he went in anyway. Typical Doctor.

*Britishness intensifies*

-Hahaha what

-Anyway, what’s with the motto “God save the Queen?” What did she do to require saving? What is she being saved from? Why God? Saying “God save her” sounds like she’s in such a dilemma of certain doom that no one but God can save her?

-Why does the Doctor look so smug about this

-TARDIS!

Nice hair, Bill.

-What’s with the armor?

-Oh, they’re protection suits.

-”The Terminator?”  ”It's a movie. You haven't seen it?”  "I'm a very busy man.”  “You'd like it. It's got killer robots.”  "Oh, I'll put it on my list.”

-"Basic physics, isn't it?”  “Could've been basic death.”

-"It's like the underground tunnels in The Thing.”  “The what?”  “It's a movie. You'd like that one too. Everybody dies.”

dafuq

DAFUQ?!

shite

-Eyyyyyyyyyyy it’s one of ‘em Ice Warriors

-*finger guns* Nice to see you old friend

-My old homicidal fr--

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS

oh ok it’s just a guy never mind

haha what

-Hahaha what

o shit he’s gone to Missy for help

Congratulations Doctor Who, you’re outdoing yourself more than usual on the Confusion department.

-Wait but how are the British ever planning to go back to Earth

-”The Ice Warriors. They could build a city under the sand, yet drench the snows of Mars with innocent blood. They could slaughter whole civilisations, yet weep at the crushing of a flower.“  Well, I did not know that.

-”There's this brilliant bit where his eye gets gouged out--”  Ice Warrior: *stares with one eye missing*  AHAHAHAHA I really shouldn’t be laughing but haha hahaha

I canNOT take those helmets seriously, ever.

Whoa

-But that reminds me, that one Ice Warrior general back in Series 7, what happened to him? I think he went back to Mars but can’t remember the details.

-But then, it was in the 20th century, so it hasn’t happened yet.

-”Don't belong? We're British! Mars is part of the empire now.“  *cue Bill Wurtz jingle*

Goddammit people

Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus...

oh shite

-On a different note, it makes sense that it’s a Queen since the females tend to be larger, stronger and more dominant in reptiles. (Not trying to be reptile gender discriminating though.)

-That pillow

-I just noticed it and I don’t know how to feel about the fact that she’s luing on cold stone without a blanket yet somebody took the care to giver her a pillow

Oh hot damn

HOLY SHIT WHAT WAS THAT

-HE’S LITERALLY CRUMPLED UP?! LIKE PAPER?!!

-what happened to the other guy with the stealy stealy motives

what th fuck

-”What does the pink thing say”  Uhhhh I think you meant red, but again, your perception of color might be different so.. um... I’ll just stay in the back here

-”We are both surrounded by noisy males. I would value your opinion.“

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT

-”You ask for mercy for these creatures?” "Indeed.” "Then I grant it.” "Thank you.” “They will die quickly.”

-HA

fuck you fUcK yOu fuuUUUUCK yOUOUOU fuck YOU sir Fuck You

“Listen, yeah? I'm going to make allowances for your Victorian attitudes because, well, you actually are Victorian.“

-Yes but he still won’t escape my silent middle fingers descending past his face and into the heavens above

And here we see BBC’s (probably) improved CGI skills

?

Ah?!!

-”And then we'll get married in that little church with the twisted spire back home, down by the river.“  Talking about future plans: A certain sign of death in many fictional works, also known as a death flag.

-Wair but how are they not noticing the Ice Warriors at all, they were popping out of the ground and going like CRRFRRRRRHK CRINK CRANK CRUNK the entire time??

holy shit damn it IS a hive

-The fucking asshole used the guy as a meat shield!!

-Vincey!!

yas

-”One good blast from the Gargantua here and your army will be on ice forever, trapped in an eternal winter, like, like Frozen! It's a movie.“

-nooooo *throws an allergic fit*

-God, not Frozen. Anything but Frozen. It’s a good movie, okay, and I was all for it at first, but God. Dear God. One year, two years, three years after that movie, still, I walk into stores, and those same Disney faces looking up from every corner, printed on every piece of merchandise, it’s just too tiring, it gets on my nerves.

-On the other hand, it has been proven that the Doctor does try to keep up with media.

HA take that

um... yay I guess...?

-”Always been my problem - thinking like a warrior.”

-”I've sent out a sort of round-robin e-mail.” *Round-robin (document), a document signed by several parties in a circle in order to hide the identity of the leader  *Round-robin letter, a news-filled letter typically accompanying a Christmas card

-Annnd I’m guessing the general in Series 7 was, like, too late in waking up or something? Left behind?

-”ArE yOU rEcEiVing Us? MAARS are YoU rEcEiVING??”  Apparently they’re called the Alpha Centauri from certain Third Doctor episodes.  Haven’t really watched much of Classic Who, so the reference wwas, at first, lost to me. Sorry.

And now my impression of them is of this species with nothing but a giant eye and a high-pitched voice and I don’t know what they are like in the old episodes but I... find them funny

oh

-ohh

-OHHH

-OHHHHHHH

-Those were markers for the Alpha Centauri ship!

Missy’s in the Tardis~

“Darn it Nardole”

WHAT’S WITH THE CREEPY SINGING ALL OF A SUDDEN

-GUYS, SERIOUSLY. THE BACKGROUND MUSIC JUST DROPPED IN TEMPERATURE LIKE OH, HELL, NO.

WHAT

-WHAT’S WITH THE ESCALATING MUSIC

-NO, DON��T CUT OFF THERE

-THE NEXT EPISODE LOOKS LIKE A FILLER, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO EXPECT

-DON’T LEAVE ME HANGIN’ LIKE THIS DAMMIT

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #143 - The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice

Spoilers below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: I don’t think it’s ever been shown in theaters, so no.

Format: DVD

1) At the time of viewing this it was the only Librarian film I had never rewatched. Not from a dislike of the film, I do enjoy it, more just because I was never in the mood before I guess.

2) The opening is very 007 while also still remaining very much Librarian. It is clear they’re going for a 007 vibe (a strong separate adventure establishing the character and tone for the film which doesn’t have too much bearing on the rest of the plot) but Flynn is still a dork (sneezing into a glass of champagne and then explaining how it’s not really champagne) and the humor is still there. It’s a lot of fun!

3) One thing I truly enjoy about this film is we get a bit more with Charlene/Jane Curtin. She is on the phone with Flynn during most of the beginning, and her reactions to the escalating purchases is incredible. Shows you that Jane Curtin is still comedy gold.

4) The entire auction scene is awesome, actually. It relies very heavily on comedic misunderstanding on three fronts: Flynn with his girlfriend, Flynn with Charlene, and Flynn with the auctioneer. It leads to some clever gags and just good fun all around!

5) I love the duel Flynn has with this random villain at the beginning of the picture, but more than that I love how they’re both history nerds! How they talk about the artifacts they’re destroying and the history behind them and GAH! Whey couldn’t we have more of this bad guy!? I LOVE this bad guy!

6) The large connection annex!

I love the effort in these films to make The Library more and more wondrous and (in result) giving us a regular stream of Flynn geek out sessions! I would 100% be Flynn in the library. Just saying.

7) I totally love Flynn’s breakdown in this film, and Wyle is amazing in the scene. It is absolutely hysterical and shows Flynn at a point of pressure we haven’t seen even when his LIFE is threatened!

Flynn: “Yeah I’m fine. Yeah I’m good. What could POSSIBLY be wrong!? I mean I work in a BASEMENT! Doing a secret job I can’t even tell my mother about! AND MY BEST FRIEND IS A SWORD! What could possibly be wrong!?

Charlene: “I think he’s snapped!”

Flynn: “This place is SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF ME! I look around, I don’t even see relics anymore. You know what I see? I see the parts of my life I have GIVEN UP finding them! Blackbeard’s chest, my mom’s sixty-fifth birthday! DaVinci’s diary, my ten year college reunion! Do you even KNOW how often those come along?”

[Beat as Judson and Charlene look at each other.]

Judson: “Um...ten...ten years?”

8) Can I just say, I could have really used more scenes between Judson and Charlene in these movies.

(GIFs originally posted by @flynnscarnation.)

9) Bruce Davidson!

Davidson is probably best known for his villainous role as Senator Kelly in the original X-Men film, but his role here as Professor Lazlo in this film is a nice change of pace. For most of the film he’s a little more introspective and definitely more intellectual. There’s a certain sadness and age he plays to Lazlo, but a nice twist he brings to the part when the story allows him to (more on that later).

10) One of the best things about this film is when Charlene comes to Flynn’s apartment more-than-a-little-drunk and has a heart-to-heart with him.

Charlene: “These are travel brochures for vacations I never took.”

Charlene: “You’re not the only one this job has cost.”

It’s a side to Charlene we’ve never seen before. A fun side, a regretful side, an empathetic side, and a side I really wish we’d get to see more of because Curtin plays it wonderfully.

11) Can we just all take a moment to appreciate how incredibly dorky Flynn’s New Orleans outfit is?

He’s such a dork I love it.

12) Stana Katic as Simone.

I love Stana Katic. Stana Katic is what kept me going through the weaker final seasons of “Castle”. The news that Stana Katic would not be on a proposed ninth season of “Castle” if it were renewed had me stop watching it. Her brief appearance in Quantum of Solace was great for me. I think Stana Katic is incredible and her performance in this film is no exception.

Simone may be the best developed of all three female leads in the Librarian film series, and considering how great Emily Davenport was that’s saying something. She is devoted to her destiny, she embraces it and celebrates it (and she tries to encourage Flynn to do the same). She has this incredible love for life and energy you see in all her scenes, a remarkable feat considering the fact that she’s dead. Her life is defined by her destiny, her need to do good, but also the pain she’s held. The loss of her lover, of her LIFE. Yet most of her scenes are defined by this love of life I mentioned before. A playfulness, a fun energy and just sincere passion that infects every scene she’s in. She messes with Flynn, she used to be an Opera singer because she LOVES music, she has this incredible smile and it’s just...GAH! I’m obviously a bit biased because I love Katic so much but I think she KILLS it as Simone.

13) Obligatory Jonathan Frakes (the director of this film and the previous Librarian film) cameo!

14) It is also worth noting that Wyle and Katic have some incredible chemistry. Maybe even more so than Flynn did with Emily in the last film, and THAT is saying something.

15) So I’m pretty familiar with most fictional movie logic, but I have to say the idea that Judas (the disciple who betrayed Christ in most Christian religions) is a new idea I kinda like. It gives the vampire an interesting origin and provides a lot of explanations (why silver harms them because of Judas’ thirty pieces of silver, their fear of the crucifix, how a wooden stake from an Aspen tree can kill them because that was the kind of tree Judas hung himself from, etc.).

16) I love this line.

Andrew [after Flynn is surprised he doesn’t believe in Voodoo]: “What? I’m a black man living in New Orleans, I have to believe in Voodoo? It’s the twenty-first century.”

17) I have said time and time again that I would probably be Flynn in these situations. Like Flynn, my tongue can be too sharp for its own good.

Flynn [after being asked why he wants the Judas Chalice]: “I already have the Judas plate and the Judas knife and fork, so if I want the complete set...”

Flynn [after the bad guy monologues]: “Wow. I’ve actually never sat this close to a psychopath before.”

18) This random thug has known Flynn for MAYBE an hour (TOPS!) and already has made a great observation about him.

Thug: “You always talk in like whole paragraphs, you ever notice that?”

19) The deepened mythology of The Library - how it holds the Tree of Knowledge and is pitched in a bigger war between good and evil - doesn’t ever really get to play out in a film. However, you can see THAT story in the TV show followup “The Librarians” on TNT!

Now that I’m done with the commercial segment of my post...

20) The twist of having Bruce Davidson’s Lazlo end up being Count Dracula who needed the titular chalice to recover his strength is actually really great. I did NOT see that coming the first time I saw this film, and I think it continues the trend started in Return to King Solomon’s Mines of having a nice final act twist to keep the audience on its toes. They work better than one might initially expect.

21) Okay, I have so many questions...

Flynn [after saying he’s fought evil in many forms]: “Approximately thirty-five forms. Give or take.”

So we have the bad guy from the first Librarian, the time traveling ninjas from the end of the first film, the Crystal Skull dude from the beginning of Return to King Solomon’s Mines, the main bad guys from that film, and the evil historian guy from the beginning of this film. That’s five forms of evil. What are the other thirty?

22) So after Flynn kills Dracula Simone decides to move on, to let herself die so her soul can be at rest because she protected the Chalice and now the vampire who turned her is dead. And you know how she goes out?

Simone: “I’ve always wanted to see the sunrise again. Will you watch with me?”

She watches the sunrise with Flynn...

And they confess their love to each other right before she dies.

(GIF originally posted by @queerseth)

You hear that? That sound in the distance? Oh it’s nothing. Just my heart breaking.

I really enjoy this film and I think it’s a fitting end to what has become The Librarian trilogy. I think it may be as good as Return to King Solomon’s Mines if not for different reasons. The handling of vampires in the film gives it a distinct taste, Wyle and Newhart are great as always, Curtin gets some more fun things to do, and the addition of Stana Katic to the cast is just 100% spectacularly! I think it’s just great and if you like any of the other Librarian stuff, Stana Katic, or just adventure films in general, you should give this a watch.

Skelly Goes on a Tangent (And Writes a Horror Story Sort of)

Below is a transcript of what happens when I try to write while other people are watching.

Somehow this leads into the plot of Rosemary’s Baby. Now you’re pregnant with the antichrist and a cult is going to steal your baby to lead them into the end of days. (Spoiler alert) But then they all mysteriously die, and the baby is adopted, only to be sent home with an unsuspecting family. Then the dog dies mysteriously, and the little kid is like “Hey mommy the new kid we adopted keeps telling me to torture small animals” and the mom just blows him off like “Timmy he’s probably autistic, you know how vaccines are.”

But really he was the antichrist. And then the dad dies getting the mom and the other kid out of the house which was obviously haunted to begin with. And the mom and the son think everything is over, but then the autistic antichrist appears in the backseat and his face is all deformed with empty eye sockets and sharp teeth and whatever. The suddenly loud music makes it even more jump scarier. Cut to black. Cue end credits.

Then...the sequel. The antichrist is at the orphanage, and nuns are mysteriously dying or getting stigmata or something. Someone gets a gruesome injury right in the beginning of the movie so that you spend the rest of it with a sick sense of dread to see how much worse things get. The answer is...so much worse. Birds mysteriously fly into the windows and die. Dogs bark at the obviously creepy little kid. They call a priest and he’s like “I have to call the leader of the catholics (the pope?) to exorcise this fuckin kid” but the pope is too busy to do that shit. So instead they send a mini boss catholic man to exorcise him. He does the head spinning thing from the exorcist and then the demon goes into the mini boss priest and he jumps out a window and falls down the stairs and dies. BUT THE KID IS STILL THE ANTICHRIST. Cut to black, cue end credits. The third movie the antichrist is grown up and now he has a job. He hunts wild animals in Australia and makes videos about them like Steve Irwin did. Because he doesn’t have an accent his show doesn’t do as well, and that makes him bitter. So suddenly the camera crew starts getting eaten by crocodiles or bitten by blue ringed octopuses or stung by giant japanese wasps. GIANT ANACONDAS. He controls them with his mind.

People and their parts are strewn across the jungle, and now the antichrist has a thirst for vengeance against the world. He also wants to find his true father. And possibly rescue his twin sister from the Empire. But he doesn’t know they are related. Yet. Also he wants to be an undertaker. He is drawn to dead bodies because they don’t judge him like living people do. And he might have necromancer powers. Slow fade to black.

ANTICHRIST 4 THE RECKONING: George goes back to the USA and crashes the plane he is flying on. Only three other people survive, and now death is out to get them, which is proven by a series of ridiculously improbable, escalating disasters that wouldn’t actually happen in real life with real physics. One person gets nailed in the head by a giant log thru their windshield. The other two get kidnapped by George, who has decided to torture them to teach them the value of life. “U have to dig around in ur own chest cavity to get the key to get the bear trap off your face before it explodes” he says in the recorded tape with a creepy puppet. The girl tries but she can’t see because her mascara is in her eyes from crying and it burns. BAM she’s dead. Now only one person is left. George appears in person to kill him personally because after him nobody will be able to pin the crime on George. The last guy is also a cop. He pulls out his gun and shoots it in the air yelling “AHHHHHHHHHHH” while George approaches. He should have shot George, but now it’s too late. George approaches him and places his shoe on the cop’s head. “You should have killed me when you had the chance,” he scoffs. But then the cop says “But...I am your father.” George’s eyes widen and then the camera pans away. Crunch goes the skull. Fade to black...then back to a close up of George’s profile. Now he monologues. “He was not truly my father. I have powers no mortal man should possess. Also he was black and I’m not. Rest in pieces, black cop.” Cut to end credits.

I guess in the final movie he finds out G is his father. I’m fuckin tired now. *whispers* G is for George. DUN DUN DUN. George is his son’s name, not G’s name. G’s name is G(aster).

*invasive asks, don't have to answer if you don't want* I keep wondering what is the appeal of slasher movies (nothing wrong with them, just not my thing)? I never read The Cursed Child, what's that about and what do you like about it?

these are good questions don’t worry xoxo

a) i can’t actually explain my penchant for slasher movies in a tumblr-wise moral manner, bc obviously slasher is a genre that tends to be filled with shit like fetishization and a demonization of mental illness and whatever else i can’t list it all right now it’s just a very flawed genre.  so i can’t really discuss it on that kind of intellectually moral level - they are very much a guilty pleasure that i feel i’m permitted.

the thing is that they are such a cheesy b-movie genre that it’s hard to be feel supremely guilty about it?  obviously they’ve gained some mainstream focus that necessitates serious discussion about various harmful shit going on, and i could go more into it if prompted and if i consider myself capable, but they are also SO DUMB.  not dumb some are smart-ish but you always know what to expect from them, you can always expect some dumb caricatures to get slaughtered, expect some final girl expy to limp their way to survival, you can expect the build up, and if there’s a surprise then that’s just an extra treat.  i guess it’s kind of cathartic, being able to exorcise some of my more serious anxieties through them, even when they get positively decadent in the blood and gore and sadism

i guess that while i also like horror as a general genre and am super happy to discuss horror films that take themselves more seriously (ie babadook, get out, that kind of stuff i sincerely believe that horror has great potential for commentary that often gets overlooked or underdeveloped), it’s a bit easier to latch onto singular slasher villains fandom-wise (your michael’s and jason’s and i guess the freddy’s altho freddy can go choke) than it is for more concept-based horrors, bc you don’t NECESSARILY have to take them seriously and you can just have some fun with them (altho they do have their place in a serious discussion, like how michael and jason are horrors that stalk otherwise safe environments, or how freddy is literally thematically about violation)

it’s hard to really explain in a justifiable way rather than a guilty-pleasure way, and i can’t really argue that i’m somehow a morally superior person for liking them and i don’t want to bc that’s dumb and exhausting.  they just tend to be fun i guess.

b) okay so what cursed child is about is essentially the relationship between harry and his son, albus severus, and how they are both essentially similar in ways that, coupled with harry’s complicated legacy and upbringing, drive them apart and eventually bring them back together, particularly in their opinions on hogwarts - this results in albus jr attempting to one-up his father via what albus understands as his first failure (cedric’s death) through time travel.  things escalate from there.

honestly i think that cursed child is a really important continuation of the themes and lessons from the main harry potter series in a more grown-up sense, and i really hate how it’s been spoiled on this site by a bunch of dumb spoilers that never fit well out of context.

like part of the problem i think is that a lot of ppl online tend to a) overidealize harry as some sassy angel child and b) try to freeze him at 11-17 years old rather than consider how his adolescent experiences might map onto who is is as an adult father.  so when he says “sometimes i wish you weren’t my son”, they decide to ignore the context leading up to that moment (albus essentially needling and baiting harry and accidentally touching upon triggers relating to his past abuse, and the two of them essentially having two different conversations) and then everything afterwards (harry’s horror and guilt over speaking in a moment of anger and spite, as he was prone to in the main series, and his desperation to protect and apologize to albus in a time where he’s triggered for a sustained period of time and afraid that his greatest enemy is somehow returning), and decide to declare that jkr must not know her own characters if she dares to write harry as a “bad dad”.  as much as ppl like to try and discuss how terrible it was for harry to suffer abuse at the dursley’s, they sure seem to want to underestimate how it affects him in the long run.  and by fuck does cursed child dig into what harry went through with the dursley’s, particularly petunia!  he’s having nightmares about her and this gets discussed and ppl still like to act like this play misrepresents how he suffered!  it’s so fucking stupid!

i guess i also can’t really lie - i initially bought into all the bad hype surrounding the play when spoilers were released, tho i hope in a more muted way than a lot of ppl i followed, and i only really got interested when i read a particularly moving think-piece about snape, and then i knew i had to have it bc i cannot stress enough how snape was One Of Those Characters that i latched onto in my childhood, and how it felt good to be a bit vindicated in the face of how this website trashes him.  also i cried a lot w snape bc it’s such good closure for his character, it helps you understand how his character potentially developed in the light of the main series, and also i got a better understanding of dumbledore too like you got the impression after the kings cross chapter in dh but when he admitted his insecurities re: how he only hurts the ppl he loves in cc?  it literally like blew his character wide open for me, it really helped me piece together a lot of the things i was unsure about with him.  so i also think it provides a lot of retroactive understanding and clarification of the characters that some ppl like to deliberately misinterpret for notes 

also ppl’s complaints about the time-travel plots are fucking stupid to be perfectly honest, esp in comparison to POA.  first off, poa did hint that it’s possible to change the timeline, cc established that we are working with very different time-travel tools than in poa, and thirdly in poa time-travel was a plot device and in cc it’s a thematic device so who even gives a fuck honestly.

basically: i think the play is a vital and important continuation and conclusion of the original series and its thematic elements, and if ppl don’t like then what the fuck ever but at least they can try to dislike it on legitimate grounds rather than things they heard secondhand or deliberately misinterpreted/decided didn’t fit with their headcanon

i can actually talk like.  a lot about this play bc there was a lot of what i liked and what i think tumblr should like if everyone could carefully remove their heads from their asses.  there are a few things i think could have been improved (while i don’t think it was necessarily baiting, i do believe scorpius/albus was a sorely missed opportunity), the play is more positive than it negative and i would kill to see it onstage.  i guess if ppl don’t like reading script it’s fine but honestly i loved the script, but i’m also fairly used to reading script so idk

also it justified my belief that hermione would be an awful teacher and i feel vindicated even tho i have not seen anyone talk about it tbh

also it made my mother cry (in a good way) and she loved it and that’s literally all the assurance anyone should need. my mom’s a good person and everyone should trust her.

The Day I Left Hollywood

Son…if you’re reading this letter, it means that you’re 18 now, and unfortunately I’m not by your side anymore. How’s your mother doing? Ahh…I imagine she’s doing alright. I just wish I could see her smile one last time. I still remember the day me and her met. It truly felt like a movie that day I walked into Wal-Mart and seen her. The way the sunlight that beamed through the roof led a trail and shone oh so brightly on her, like royalty. I hope you’re taking care of your sister Ayanami for me. Even though she’s your older sister, you’re the man of the house right now, so everything that I couldn’t accomplish and protect is all on you right now. Hows’ Grandma and Grandpa? I wonder if your Grandma is still making those famous empanadas that she used to make for me when I used to be around. Is Grandpa still working out in the garden? Awe man…I missed the days of waking up and walking out onto the patio with you and your sister in my arms, staring at the misty rainbow that used to appear over the flower patch. Is uncle Junior still in the army? Did Aunt Hilda open up her gym yet? I know it was always her dream. Son…how are YOU doing? I hope you kept those fucking grades up…you know how I get about schoolwork. Are you eating right? Did you choose what college you’ll be going to in the winter? Man I really miss you guys. I never really understood how lucky I was to have you all until the day the doctor told me I had stage 5 kidney disease. The days you used to take the bus with me to the hospital for my hemodialysis treatment felt like an eternity. I never was a fan of needles. The blood being sucked out of my arm and pushing itself back in after cleansing always made me nauseous. Man…I’m really getting off topic here. Son…I really didn’t want to let you find out the truth this way, but me and your mother are not your real parents. In fact, we aren’t related in the slightest. Your mother probably wouldn’t approve of me telling you this way, but what other option did I have? I wanted to take this to the grave with me but you have the right to know about your real parents; Steven and Dalace, and the night they died. Steven and Dalace met in highschool. Imagine your common and successful high school sweet heart story, this was nothing like that. In fact, it was the complete opposite. Those days I was roaming the halls of John I Leonard High after being kicked out of Lake Worth High for poor grades and “malconduct.” That’s not even a word. Anyways your parents always had an on and off relationship throughout their years, bickering and fighting whenever the chance arose but also making up because they couldn’t keep their hands off of each other. I was 3 years their senior and had no idea who they were yet, but my younger brother Shelnes was friends with both. I ended up graduating from J.I.L. after a year of solid work and keeping to myself, and thus continued my journey of life in another city while my brother stayed behind to make a name for himself. I spent my failing college years studying hardcore while trying to find myself. I had no idea who I was. I spent most of my time watching anime and listening to rock by myself while my head was off somewhere imagining a world where a damsel otaku in distress needed to be rescued by a main character with some sort of high intense earth veering powers. Some years went by and I moved backed home by the request of my older brother who realized that I was getting nothing done in school. I walked into the room and sat next to my brother while he was playing 2K with your father who sat next to him. That was the first time I met your father. Your father loved basketball, and whenever he wasn’t shooting hoops he found an opportunity to display his skills on the console with ample effort. We all talked about our love for the sport and somehow the conversation birthed a passionate flame in our hearts for each other. He was a friend. Soon to be my best. We started hanging out every other night, going to 24 Hour Fitness around 11PM with our other friend Chris to get a session in, ending the night with a couple rounds of 21. No idea how Chris used to win them all, I guess it was the anger in his eyes. A year went by and I was ready to give school another shot. We started community college. Me and your father used to skip chemistry class and sneak into the basketball for beginners course so we could meet up with my brother and play against the pros. I remember I had a crush on one of the female players and they clowned me about it, starting up a joke about her and calling her my ex-wife. Don’t tell your mother about that part. College was the first time I met Dalace. I remember walking to math class during the early morning and bumping into her and Chris. She told me how she was friends with your uncle all through high school and how he would always mention me looking out for him. I always looked out for your uncle, regardless of the situation because who else would? You know the relationship me and my mother had…it was never anything to speak of. I raised that kid like he was my own. We did everything for each other. I was surprised when the details slipped from her tongue. When the subject switched to Steven, there wasn’t much to be said but the look on her face showed me that she truly loved him. I didn’t talk to your mom for a while after this day but I still remember the look in her eyes like it haunted me. The pain and sadness radiated from her eyes like a piece of her was missing. I regret never asking her about the way she felt but I knew it was a territory I couldn’t step on to. More years passed and I ended up coming home once again after leaving Florida Atlantic University. I have no idea how I made it through those years. The average day for me was working out at the school gym, rushing to class late while trying to grasp my life together, and slowly cruising home after a day of anguish and failure. Steven used to come by to my dorm a couple nights a week. We’d continuously debate basketball and talk about Dragonball Z with my roommates. It seemed like everyone watched anime during those days. After moving home, I met my wife for the first time while walking in to a Wal-Mart. Me and Steven were driving home from a late workout session and stopped by to grab a couple of gatorades to refuel before calling it a night. Man..was she gorgeous. Like no other woman I’ve ever seen. You already know what came next. Me and Frances introduced your sister into the world a couple of years later. A month after that, you came into the world. I still remember getting the call from Steven telling me Dalace gave birth to you. Life was perfect. I had a beautiful child and my best friend had a beautiful son. We used to make jokes about pitting you two against each other as rivals to claim the title as the ultimate chosen one. Everything felt good until the day I got that call from Dalace… It was Mother’s Day..2017…you were a year and half. I was at home while Ayanami and Frances took a day for themselves to go about the town. Aunt Hilda and Aunt Paige went with them. It seemed like I was home alone that day. I was writing a new chapter for my short story series while listening to “Tony Story Part 2 by Meek Mill.” Dalace called me in tears with your father shouting in the background. She tried to calm him down but the situation escalated too quickly. So much was running through my head that I didn’t know how to go about anything at that particular second. Words of adultery and deceit drowned out the background noise. You see, your father had a gun in his hand and your mother told me you were in the middle of the living room right next to him. She was worried your father was going to do something that he would ultimately live to regret. I heard a gunshot go off and heard the phone drop to the ground. I couldn’t put a picture together. The sound still haunts me to this day. I grabbed my keys and ran out of the house into my car and floored it for what felt like the longest trip ever. So many emotions were in the atmosphere. I didn’t know how to feel. I was scared of what I would walk into when I got there. Driving the vehicle, I could only think of the day I met your mother for the first time. The pain and sadness in her eyes affected my thought process the entire trip. Was there something I was missing? Was there a side to my best friend that I didn’t know about? 30 minutes felt like a year. I finally arrived but it was too late. The cops beat me to it. I came to a screeching halt, switched gears, and ran out of my car through the front doors of the apartment. My best friend and his wife were dead on the floor. The cops told me that you were screaming and crying on the floor when they finally arrived after getting a call from the neighbors in the apartment across the hall. I couldn’t understand what or even how things came to this conclusion when I started to piece the puzzle together. You see we had a friend named Chris that we used to do everything with. He was one of the boys, or so we thought. It seemed that he and your mother had been seeing each other in secrecy since the times of high school. That day, your father finally learned of the truth when a text from him came across the screen of your mothers phone. I guess she didn’t want me learning the truth since she never once mentioned the fact that while she called me during the dispute, Chris was there and had a gun in his palm and had already let a shot off into your fathers right arm. She felt so guilty but blind, that she tried to turn everything around to her being the innocent one. You see, your father ran and grabbed his gun trying to defend himself while shouting out about how your mother cheated and did terrible things, but everything drowned out over the phone. The next shot into his head sealed the deal for me because I thought he shot her, when it was nothing even close. Chris couldn’t deal with the fact that the woman he loved lived a life that he wanted with another man, so he shot your mother as well. Chris was arrested a week later while on the run in Jacksonville. I never went to see him. I couldn’t face the killer that took my friend and his wife. I wish I mustered up the strength to confront him and speak my mind but why waste my time on a coward? Chris was weak. He couldn’t deal with his emotions so he took it out on others. I adopted you and kept a promise to your father. We promised each other that if something were to ever happen to one of us, take care of the others child regardless of the position we’re in in life. I wonder if he would’ve wanted me to tell you the truth. Regardless of how I’ve raised you like my own, I could never replace your real father. I never had a son so taking you in was a job I was happy to accept. I miss your father though. He always walked around with a smile on his face that carried the gleam of 1000 suns. Your mother smiled but her eyes always told another story. I wonder if the pain in them were results from the fact that she kept secrets she never meant to share. Man I wrote a lot. I always managed to get off topic when it came to writing letters. Speaking of letters, I received one from Chris upstate. He wants to see you in person so you could hear everything from his point of view, and why he did what he did. I can’t tell you what to do son. Ultimately, the path you choose to walk is the one that will provide a sense of relief that only you can feel. I included the address to the prison he’s being held in. Oh Stephen how I truly miss you. I miss your sister. I miss your mother. Both of them. I miss your father. I miss Grandma and Grandpa. I miss your dumbass uncle and your pizza loving aunt. I don’t know how to end this letter, you know I was never good at showing my emotions with things like this. I know, I’ll leave you with a riddle… “It stands alone, with no bone or solid form. Adamant, it prospers never wrong, though hurt it may. Twistable, malleable, might it be, but always straight as an arrow.”